THE REMEDIATION OF SPENT ENGINE OIL CONTAMINATED SOIL

ABSTRACT

The experiment was conducted at Faculty of Agriculture, Soil Science and Land Management Screen house of the University of Benin, Benin City, with the aim to determine the potentiality of cassava peel as a remediation tool for spent engine oil contaminated soil. The experiment is a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with 4 treatments replicated 3 times. The spent engine oil was applied to the soil and was left for 2 weeks to equilibrate before adding the cassava peels. Soil samples were collected 2 weeks before application of cassava peels at different levels which includes 0kg/ha, 0.02kg/ha, 0.03kg/ha and 0.04kg/ha . The Soil samples were then analyzed using Standard laboratory analytical methods. The result showed that most of the parameters after the experiments, e.g., pH of the soil which was 5.3 became highest at treatment 2 (0.02kg/ha) gave the highest pH of 5.69, total nitrogen was highest at treatment 4 (0.04kg/ha) giving 1.32 as compared to the initial state of the soil which is 0.73, total organic carbon at the initial soil was 12.6g/kg later became 29.57g/kg at the end of the experiment at treatment 4( 0.04kg/ha), Available phosphorus was 8.11g/kg and increased to 16.51g/kg at treatment 4(0.04kg/ha), total hydrocarbon content was highest when cassava peel was 20g/2kg soil. Potassium increased from 0.25cmol/kg to 0.31cmol/kg, calcium was highest at treatment 2 giving 0.87cmol/kg as compared to the initial soil of 0.70cmo/kg, magnesium increased from 0.23cmol/kg to 0.32 cmol/kg. Sand particle size of the soil was 887 and increased to 889 after the experiment, clay content of the soil was 55 and decreased to 49.33, silt was 58.0 and increased to 63.53.