Home – Home – Jornals – Chemistry for Sustainable Development 2011 number 2

Results are reported concerning a model experiment for studying the physiological characteristics of two plant species, the activity of soil enzymes, the intensity of oil pollution accumulation and oil composition depending on the amount of oil introduced into the permafrost soil. It was suggested that with increasing the intensity of oil pollution, the soil-plant system mechanisms from the antioxidant and DNA repairing systems to apoptosis and SOS reparations. Introducing the same amount of oil into the soil (0.16 %) in the experiments with growing plants without them demonstrated that the action of the soil microflora resulted in the biodegradation of about one-third (32.2 %) of the oil introduced. In the case of plant growth (wormwood and peppergrass) the transformation of oil-caused contamination was much more profound amounting to 60.0 and 66.7 %, respectively. In the presence of the plants the process of destruction, alongside with n-alkanes and 2- and 3-methylalkanes, involve a wide range of structural isomers, including 12- and 13-methylalkanes and isoprenoids. As a result, the hydrocarbon composition of bitumenoids demonstrates changes direction toward restoring the natural geochemical background. The results obtained in studying the adaptive capacity of plants and the pollution transformation efficiency allow one to find out the maximum permissible residual oil contamination level in the soil, which level amounted to 0.1 %, or 1 g/kg of soil.