Zobacz listę projektów
Soil contamination is one of most important factors influencing the quality of agricultural products. It should also be stressed that soil pollution is usually permanent and should not be expected to be easily reversible. Areas subject to soil pollution should be excluded from agricultural production. Such actions hamper the local economic development and progress. The reclamation of contaminated sites is essential for the urban development.
Digging out the contaminated soil and treat it as disposal in a waste incineration plant is a billion euro task worldwide, even for only the hot spots of the contaminated site. The overarching goal of our project BCAMEND is to evaluate an in situ remediation strategy for the contaminated areas. In our project (BCAMEND) we propose a cheaper, sound, more effective, and scientifically interesting tool for the reclamation of the contaminated sites to improve soil quality and plant production. It evaluates sorbent amendment as a tool to reduce the threats of this truly global environmental issue. If successful this BCAMEND is a technology that can be widely used for soil remediation, which in turn creates business and investment prospects and opportunities. Moreover application of the ecotoxicological bioassays will increase our knowledge about the interactions between the biosphere, ecosystems and human activities.
The effects of different forms of black carbon (BC) (powdered and granulated active carbon, reactivated active carbon and biochar) amendment on behavior (mobility, bioavailability and toxicity) of hydrophobic organic pollutants (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, organochlorine pesticides) and their toxicity in contaminated soils will be investigated in detail. The processes will be studied both in laboratory and at field scale, in order to better understand the range and character of interaction between organic contaminants and soil amended by BC as well as in order to present new practical solutions for degraded areas to the technical and scientific community. The comprehensive assessment of ecotoxicological risk associated witch BC-amended soil will include battery of biotests (Daphtoxkit, Rototoxkit, Algaltoxkit, Prototoxkit, Ostracodtoxkit, Phytotoxkit, Microtox, MARA as well as more specific effects such as dioxin-like (EROD assay) and estrogen-like responses (MELN assay)).
The addition of BC to soil is expected to have a profound effect on the affinity of soil for organic compounds. The proposed research possesses a high degree of novelty. The most important innovation of the present study is providing a new and powerful approach for the reclamation of contaminated sites and the improvement of soil quality and production. This research will be an important step towards understanding the interaction between organic contaminants and BC amended degraded soils in relation to their ecotoxicity, which will help us to protect the soil and water more efficiently as we strive towards a more sustainable future. To our knowledge it will be the first attempt to recognize BC use as a contaminants’ immobilization agent in polluted soils at the field scale. Other novel aspects include (i) the study of mass transfer rate in soil−BC systems in laboratory and field scale, (ii) the development of the passive sampler method use to quantify freely dissolved concentrations of contaminants in soils, (iii) the combined use of a battery of biotests together with bioavailability extraction to determine risk for environment and human.
