Objective
Objectives
- To develop a technically practical and economically feasible technology for the bioremediation of heavy metal contaminated land using biomass fuel crops
- To develop and test the environmental credentials of a closed loop system using biomass fuel crops to remove heavy metals from contaminated land, separation of the heavy metals into the smallest ash fraction during combustion for energy production allowing recovery and reuse of the metals and recycling of the wood ash as a fertiliser at the site of wood production.
- To facilitate the breeding of biomass fuel crops specifically for the decontamination of heavy metal contaminated land through the characterisation of heavy metal uptake by a wide number of clones and the development of a rapid screening technique for inclusion in a breeding programme.
- To modify and test the environmental assessment tools, LCA and EIA specifically for use for contaminated land and thereby provide a through assessment of the environmental consequences at local and global scale of the use of bioremediation technology.
- To develop a computer based tool for use by local government planning officers, land developers, industry and regulatory agencies in the planning and execution of bioremediation of contaminated land.
Project outline
Land on the urban fringe can be contaminated with heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, arsenic and zinc as a result of industrial activity, posing a risk both to human health and the environment and restricting the use to which the land may be put. Remediation of contamination may be possible by chemical treatment but this is highly expensive and seldom undertaken for large areas suffering from low level contamination.
Biomass fuel crops take up and tolerate, to a greater or lesser degree, heavy metals into their harvestable parts. Technology is being developed which allows almost total recovery of that metal in the smallest ash Fraction during combustion for energy production, minimising releases to the atmosphere and permitting beneficial recycling of bottom ash. Expansion of the adoption of biomass fuels is being limited by competition with other uses of agricultural land. Industrially contaminated land is low value and utilised; fuel production on these site represents an opportunity to remediate or stabilise contaminants, gain economic return from the land, stimulate employment in areas of industrial decline and accelerate the market penetration of biomass fuels.
Project elements:
- Screening and breeding of woody and gramineceous biomass fuel crops for heavy metal take up and metal tolerance.
- Development of soil treatments to increase the bioavailable fraction of metals present.
- Characterisation and evaluation of parameters controlling fractionation of metals is ash during combustion.
- Thorough LCA and EIA of remediation by the proposed bioremediation technology.
- Development of computer based decision support tool for assessing the suitability of a site for bioremediation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology environmental engineering waste management waste treatment processes recycling
- engineering and technology environmental biotechnology bioremediation
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry transition metals
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels
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Coordinator
SL7 2HD Marlow - Buckinghamshire
United Kingdom
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