State of the art and future challenges for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons is sediments: sources, fate, bioavailability and remediation techniques.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are amongst the most abundant contaminants found in the aquatic environment. Due to their toxicity and carcinogenicity, their sources, fate, behaviour, and cleanup techniques have been widely investigated in the last several decades. When entering the sediment-water system, PAH fate is determined by particular PAH and sediment physico-chemical properties.

A chemical and microbiological characterization and toxicity assessment of the Pančevo industrial complex wastewater canal sediments, Serbia.

The wastewater canal Vojlovica of the Pančevo industrial area, Serbia, is the main collector of the effluents from the local industrial complex. The canal is directly connected to the Europe's second largest river, the Danube. Here, we present a chemical and microbiological analysis of the sediment in order to determine the fate of pollutants over the years, as well as its current condition.

Using chemical desorption of PAHs from sediment to model biodegradation during bioavailability assessment.

This work compares the biodegradation potential of four polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) (phenanthrene, pyrene, chrysene and benzo(a)pyrene, chosen as representatives of the 3, 4 and 5 ring PAHs) with their desorption from sediment by XAD4 resin and methyl-β-cyclodextrin (MCD). The biodegradation study was conducted under various conditions (biostimulation, bioaugmentation and their combination). The results show that total PAH removal in all treatments except biostimulation gave similar results, whereby the total amount of PAHs was decreased by about 30-35%.

Impact of hydrocarbon type, concentration and weathering on its biodegradability in soil.

The objective of this research was to investigate the impact of the hydrocarbon type and concentration, as well as the total effect of the natural weathering process to hydrocarbon biodegradability in sandy soil and the environment. In this experiment, sandy soil was separately contaminated with 0.5%, 1.