The Dynamics of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPHS) Levels in the Body of Water in Ethiope River, Delta State, Nigeria.
Abstract
This research investigated the levels of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPHs) levels in the polluted surface water body of River Ethiope, Delta State, Nigeria. Three remediation methods (Bioremediation, Silica encapsulation and Surfactant methods) were employed as to ascertain the best remediation efficacy. The physicochemical parameters of the polluted river water samples were determined prior to and after analysis and results showed that most of the parameters were within the maximum permissible limit for drinking water in Nigeria. Levels of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPHs) in the surface river water samples were extracted separately using standard analytical methods and examined with the Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrophotometry (GC-MS) before and after analysis. Results revealed that there was a diminishing TPHs trend in all samples on employing the three remediation techniques. Bioremediation method gave the optimum remediation efficiency on administering the second dose of treatment, the highest percentage remediation of 94.48 while optimum remediation was obtained on administering the first dose for the silica encapsulation and surfactant methods respectively (94.11 and 92.56). The kinetics of remediation revealed that all plots of graph were linear with regression coefficient, R2 for the pseudo first order fittings, highly close to 1 (R2 = 0.9968) in all the samples. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that there was no significant difference (P<0.05) at 95% confidence limit in the various remediation techniques but in terms of the treatment dosage, there was a significant difference in the bioremediation method (P <0.05) at 95 confidence level. Based on the expected findings, it was recommended that in the event of oil spill, involving contamination of all compartments of the marine habitat such as the water surface, water column, sediments, only one single spill response strategy is unlikely to provide optimal protection. Therefore, effort should be made by management bodies to adopt two or multiple techniques.
