About Bioremediation

BioremediationHepure offers a full range of green and sustainable bioremediation products for the remediation of groundwater and soil contaminants to the environmental engineering community. We offer a variety of proven products for aerobic and anaerobic bioremediation of organic contaminants that have been laboratory and field proven.

Bioremediation can be defined as any process that uses microorganisms, or a food source for those microbes to return the natural environment altered by contaminants to its original condition. Bioremediation may be employed to attack specific water and soil contaminants, such as degradation of chlorinated solvents and hydrocarbons.

There are two approaches to bioremediation. Biostimulation involves the modification of the environment to stimulate existing bacteria capable of bioremediation. This can be done by addition of various forms of rate limiting nutrients and electron donors, such as phosphorus, nitrogen, oxygen, or carbon (e.g. in the form of emulsified vegetable oils (EVO). Amendments are usually added to the subsurface through injection wells.
Biostimulation can be enhanced by bioaugmentation. This process, overall, is referred to as bioremediation and is an EPA-approved method for reversing the presence of oil or gas spills.

Bioaugmentation is the introduction of a group of natural microbial strains or a genetically engineered variant to treat contaminated soil or water.

Usually the steps involve studying the indigenous varieties present in the location to determine if biostimulation is possible. If the indigenous variety do not have the metabolic capability to perform the remediation process, exogenous varieties with such sophisticated pathways are introduced.

At sites where soil and groundwater are contaminated with chlorinated ethenes, such as tetrachlorethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE), bioaugmentation is used to ensure that the in situ microorganisms can completely degrade these contaminants to ethylene and chloride, which are non-toxic.

Bioaugmentation is typically performed in conjunction with the addition of electron donor (biostimulation) to achieve geochemical conditions in groundwater that favor the growth of the dechlorinating microorganisms in the bioaugmentation culture.

Hepure’s product line of proven, patented products for bioremediation may be custom-formulated and is available in a variety of field-ready package.