Engineered Poplars to clean contamination sites

[-Mikey-]

I came across an interesting article on the net, though I'd share it and see what people's reactions are?

 

Scientists at the University of Washington are engineering poplar trees that can clean up contamination sites by absorbing groundwater pollutants through their roots. The plants then break the pollutants down into harmless byproducts that are incorporated into their roots, stems and leaves or released into the air.

 

In laboratory tests, the transgenic plants are able to remove as much as 91 percent of trichloroethylene — the most common groundwater contaminant at U.S. Superfund sites — out of a liquid solution. Regular poplar plants removed just 3 percent of the contaminant.

 

 

Full article: USGS: Superfund Cleanup of Ground Water, Ft. Lewis, Washington scroll down to "Phytoremediation with hybrid poplars" section.

[Pedroski]

It's all good stuff.

 

Once site clean then can fell the trees for biomass energy too!

[sloth]

There was a post on here a while back regarding phytoremediation. A company had carried out a project (possibly the first in the UK, possibly in Reditch. Though don't quote me on that!) along those lines. I think they used standard trees, didn't answer my questions either. Not sure if they ever returned to arbtalk even...

[Pedroski]

Yeah, Acorn Environmental Management Group - post made by RT400 back in Jan. You had very relevant questions and I was miffed that he didn't take the time to respond to them.

[sloth]

I'm sure there were good reasons for not answering. Maybe he never returned and saw them? Shame though, I'd have been interested in the reply...

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

Bio-acumulation is nothing new. Birch and Sycamore are used down here by AI et al for mine spoil decon. Many bioacumulators inc soft plants are seeded and harvested with quite considerable heavy metal uplift.

[Pedroski]

What's new is producing hybrid Poplars that can withstand and metabolise higher concentrations of TCE.

[likeitorlumpit]

What happens to the plants that have grown on heavy metal contaminated land. How are the heavy metals removed from them.

[Pedroski]

Plants are usually removed and destroyed. If incinerated, then there are processes that can be used to remove heavy metals from the fly ash. Trees would typically be left to grow.

 

Those hybrid poplars are being looked at for removing TCE (trichloroethylene) from ground water. Some interesting info on Wiki re TCE Trichloroethylene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Old (2007) article on enhanced phytoremediation using hybrid poplars - explains quite well how it's done Enhanced phytoremediation of volatile environmental pollutants with transgenic trees

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

Love it, this is truly the way forward, natural or (near natural in this case) solutions to contamination, fungi too have massive contributions to make in this area, I believe the reed Phragmytes and the black walnut have also high metal absorbative capacities