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Review
. 2023 Oct 18;13(44):30586-30605.
doi: 10.1039/d3ra05062a.

Natural surfactant mediated bioremediation approaches for contaminated soil

Pintu Sar  1   2 , Sandip Kundu  1 , Aniruddha Ghosh  1 , Bidyut Saha  1
Affiliations
Review

Natural surfactant mediated bioremediation approaches for contaminated soil

Pintu Sar et al. RSC Adv. .

Abstract

The treatment of environmental pollution by employing microorganisms is a promising technology, termed bioremediation, which has several advantages over the other established conventional remediation techniques. Consequently, there is an urgent inevitability to develop pragmatic techniques for bioremediation, accompanied by the potency of detoxifying soil environments completely. The bioremediation of contaminated soils has been shown to be an alternative that could be an economically viable way to restore polluted soil. The soil environments have long been extremely polluted by a number of contaminants, like agrochemicals, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals, emerging pollutants, etc. In order to achieve a quick remediation overcoming several difficulties the utility of biosurfactants became an excellent advancement and that is why, nowadays, the biosurfactant mediated recovery of soil is a focus of interest to the researcher of the environmental science field specifically. This review provides an outline of the present scenario of soil bioremediation by employing a microbial biosurfactant. In addition to this, a brief account of the pollutants is highlighted along with how they contaminate the soil. Finally, we address the future outlook for bioremediation technologies that can be executed with a superior efficiency to restore a polluted area, even though its practical applicability has been cultivated tremendously over the few decades.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Classification of microbial surfactants along with their representative architectures.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Biological synthetic routes for the synthesis of a variety of lipopeptides (i.e. surfactin), glycolipids (i.e. rhamnolipids, sophorolipids, etc.), bioemulsifiers and hydrophobins using carbohydrate substrates (redrawn and extended from ref. 50–52).
Fig. 3
Fig. 3. Chemical structures of selected biosurfactants: sophorolipid (open chain form), surfactin, rhamnolipid, and emulsan.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4. Bioremediation processes are mainly classified into two categories: in situ and ex situ. The in situ and ex situ processes have different pathways of bioremediation.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5. Schematic representation of rhamnolipid-enhanced aqueous dispersion of HOCs. Reprinted with permission from ref. Copyright 2018 Elsevier.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6. Probable mechanistic actions of biosurfactants in the microbial decay of hydrophobic pollutants from soil media: (a) generation of micelles and encapsulation of organic contaminants within the microbial cell and (b) microbial attachment of hydrophobic pollutants. Reprinted with permission from ref. .
Fig. 7
Fig. 7. Mechanism of saponin assisted heavy metal removal from soil–sludge. Reprinted with permission from ref. Copyright 2017 Royal Society of Chemistry.
Fig. 8
Fig. 8. Technique for heavy metal removal from contaminated soil using biosurfactants and the obtained removal rates for Cu, Zn, Cr, and Cd of 90–100% in normal conditions.
Fig. 9
Fig. 9. Functions of biosurfactants in the remediation of various soil pollutants.
None
Pintu Sar
None
Sandip Kundu
None
Aniruddha Ghosh
None
Bidyut Saha
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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