The exploration, production, and environmental biotechnology of petroleum are all topics covered in the Journal of Petroleum & Environmental Biotechnology. Petroleum exploration and production involves extracting hydrocarbons from the earth's underground reservoirs with the aid of several different disciplines, including petroleum geology, drilling, reservoir simulation, reservoir engineering, completions, and oil and gas facilities engineering. Crude oil or natural gas are two of the available forms of the hydrocarbons that were generated. Environmental engineering is a method for integrating science and engineering that can be used to enhance the quality of the environment, including the air, water, and land.

With the aid of microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and even plants, bioremediation is the process of eliminating or utilising the pollutants from a particularly polluted environment (such soil, municipal water tanks or sewage water, oil spills in water, or land). It is a form of biotechnical waste management technique that doesn't utilise dangerous chemicals, protects the environment, and encourages a sustainable one.

There are a number of treatments where contaminated water or solids are cleaned up by chemical processing, incineration, and landfill burial. There are also more waste management techniques, including those for managing nuclear and solid waste. Bioremediation is different since it does not involve the use of dangerous chemicals.

Types of Bioremediation

Bioremediation is of three types –

1) Biostimulation

The supply of growth-restricting nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, to facilitate the interaction of either exogenous or autochthonous microorganisms in the degradation of polluted environments is known as "biostimulation," and it is a common strategy used in in situ bioremediation of contaminated water bodies.

2) Bioaugmentation

Bioaugmentation for Chlorinated Contaminants

Cultured microorganisms that are employed for bioaugmentation frequently have a "specialism" in decomposing particular target pollutants. For instance, some microorganisms might be able to breakdown chlorinated substances like vinyl chloride (VC) and cis-1,2 dichloroethylene (cDCE) more quickly than the local microbial community that naturally lives there. Due to the utilisation of bioaugmentation to speed up the reductive dechlorination process, meet remediation goals, and save money, the remediation community has turned toward a more prescriptive approach.

3) Intrinsic Bioremediation

Given that soil and water are two biomes that are almost certain to always be contaminated and toxic, intrinsic bioremediation is most successful there. Intrinsic bioremediation is typically applied in subterranean spaces, such as underground storage tanks for petroleum. Such a location makes it difficult to see leaks, and impurities and chemicals can enter through them to taint the gasoline. As a result, only microorganisms can clean the tanks and remove the pollutants.