Abstract—Soil environment is a major sink for a multitude of chemicals and heavy metals, which inevitably leads to environmental contamination problems. Various human activities including agricultural, urban or industrial, or landfilling are major contributors to heavy metal contamination in the environment. Since landfilling is one of the ultimate waste disposal methods, the generation of leachate is inevitable. Leachate from landfill is highly heterogeneous and consist high amount of heavy metal. Subsequent movement of the leachate into the surrounding soil, ground water or surface water could lead to severe pollution problems to and cause toxicity to human and other living organisms. Microorganisms has the ability to solubilize the metals (or increase their bioavailability) via the production of siderophores and adsorb the metals in their biomass on metal-induced outer membrane proteins and by bio precipitation. Therefore this study aimed to remediate heavy metal in leachate contaminated soil from a closed non-sanitary landfill in Kuala Lumpur. Preliminary soil and leachate characterization revealed high amount of metal contaminants as compared to the prescribed limit by local and international standard. Total of eighteen microbes were isolated from the contaminated site and were grouped into two treatments, proteobacteria and non-proteo bacteria. Comparison between the treatments revealed that proteobacteria (Treatment A) were performing higher metal removal activity compared to non- proteobacteria (Treatment B) and control (Treatment C). Out of four metals tested in this study, three of the metals (As (71.86%), Ni (50.8%), Al (87.15%)) were removed significantly by the addition of Treatment A. Highest metal removal rate constant was obtained for Al at 0.02 day-1. Therefore, it can be concluded that the addition of microbes, namely proteobacteria to leachate contaminated soil can remove the heavy metal content at a significant rate.

Index Terms—Leachate, proteobacteria, metal removal capacity, bioattenuation, bioremediation.

Fauziah S. H., Emenike C. U., and Agamuthu are with Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They are also with Center for Research in Waste Management, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Jayanthi B. is with Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Cite: Fauziah S. H., Jayanthi B., Emenike C. U., Agamuthu, "Remediation of Heavy Metal Contaminated Soil Using Potential Microbes Isolated from a Closed Disposal Site," International Journal of Bioscience, Biochemistry and Bioinformatics vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 230-237, 2017.