Grant: Engage Grants Program

. Composting has been selected by Nordlys Environmental, LP (""Nordlys"") as a main approach in the ex-situ treatment of petroleum hydrocarbon (PHC) contaminated soil in the Survival Tank Farm (STF) at 5 Wing Goose Bay in Labrador. However, the application of composting to treat PHC contaminated soil faces several challenges. Firstly, wide variations of treatment efficiencies have been reported due to diverse site conditions. Settings tailored to specific soil conditions need to be obtained for STF remediation. Secondly, due to low bioavailability of PHCs, appropriate composting amendments need to be identified for increasing the rate of, and accelerating, the treatment process. Thirdly, the understanding of microbial communities and metabolic pathways during composting is still extremely limited and has hindered effective process control. The proposed project aims to address this knowledge and technical gap by developing a biosurfactant-aided composting approach and conducting associated microarray analyses on soil samples from STF. The project will: (1) develop a laboratory-scale composting system to obtain optimized operation conditions to efficiently, and cost-effectively, treat site-specific contaminated soil; (2) apply a novel biosurfactant as the amendment to increase the bioavailability of PHCs and accelerate the composting treatment; and (3) investigate microbial community dynamics, metabolic pathways and corresponding functional genes in the composting remediation system using GeoChip 5.0, a microarray-based metagenomics tool, and relate the results to composting process control parameters. The proposed research will lead to a novel composting approach for the treatment of PHC contaminated soil in STF. It will also greatly expand scientific knowledge on composting-associated microbial communities. With the collaboration with Nordlys, the proposed project will provide a practical and innovative solution that addresses the company's existing problems, generating a long-term benefit to the company, and Canada, through technology transfer and field applications.