Soil contamination by engine oil or motor has long been a severe environmental problem that needs to be addressed. This toxin builds up in the food chain and pose a serious hazard to human, animal and plant existence. Automobile usage and chemical process industries discharge this pollutant into the environment. To address this problem, a long-term, environment-friendly approach is needed to return polluted sites to their natural state prior to pollution. Incineration, excavation, leaching, electrokinetics, thermal desorption, volatilization, and other physicochemical techniques are currently being used, but due to the limitations of these techniques, phytoremediation has been found to be a cost-effective, non-invasive, and eco-friendly method of reclaiming sites contaminated with pollutants such as crude oil products, heavy metals, pesticides, dyes, and other chemicals.

Many leguminous plants have been researched in the phytoremediation process, however Hydrocotyle umbellata, to the best of my knowledge, is a plant whose phytoremediation potentials on hydrocarbon contaminated sites has not been studied. As a result, I have decided to assess the plant’s performance in remediating and reclaiming spent engine oil contaminated soil. This research will take 60 days to complete and has been broken into two phases. Prior to treatment with different concentrations of spent engine oilin separate experimental pots and plant sowing, the physicochemical characteristics (moisture, pH, organic carbon, organic matter, Ash content, Nitrogen contents and C: N ratio) of the soil will be evaluated. In the second phase, the determination of the plant’s remediation potentials will be carried out. The results of this research will determine whether Hydrocotyle umbellatashould be used in the clean-up or reclamation of soil contaminated by spent engine oil.