Microbial Bioremediation for Environmental Sustainability: Recent Developments

Abstract

Microbial bioremediation has become an interesting and sustainable technique for dealing with pollution of the environment through microbial degradation, transformation, immobilization, and recovery of contaminants. This review looks into recent developments of microbial bioremediation with focus on pollutants such as wastewater, pharmaceuticals and antibiotics, heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, plastics, microplastics and other emerging pollutants. Mechanisms employed by microbes include biodegradation, biosorption, bioaccumulation and biotransformation together with advancements in the use of bioaugmentation, microbial consortia, microbial electrochemical systems, omics technology, and genetically modified microbes. The reviewed research shows that microbial technologies have the potential of providing efficient pollutant management as well as resource recovery in the form of biogas, microbial biomass, biopolymers, nutrients and metals, thus making circular economy possible. However, some limitations like slow degradation rate, incomplete mineralization, formation of toxic metabolites, instability of the microbes, antibiotic resistance, lack of field studies, scalability issues and biosafety concerns are evident. Future studies should focus on long-term field investigations, realistic environmental matrix, understanding of microbial community dynamics, transformation product identification and use of advanced biotechnology, life cycle assessment and process engineering. In general, microbial bioremediation holds great promise towards sustainable future but development of efficient, safe, scalable, resource recovery and human relevant technologies is crucial.