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Assessment of addition of biochar to filtering mixtures for potential water pollutant removal.

ABSTRACT: Green roofs are used increasingly to alleviate peaks of water discharge into the sewage systems in urban areas. Surface runoff from roofs contain pollutants from dry and wet deposition, and green roofs offer a possibility to reduce the amounts of pollutants in the water discharged from roofs by degradation and filtering. These pollutants would otherwise enter wastewater treatments plants and ultimately end up in sewage sludge that is spread on agricultural soils. The most common substrates used in green roofs have limited capacity for filtration and sorption. Also, more sustainable alternatives are sought, due to the high carbon footprint of these materials. Biochar is a carbon-rich material produced by pyrolysis of biomass, and several types of biochar have been described as good sorbents and filter materials. Biochar is also a light and carbon negative material, which may fulfill other desired criteria for new green roof substrates. We here report on an experiment where two types of biochar, produced from olive husks at 450 °C or from forest waste at 850 ° C were mixed with volcanic rock or peat, and tested for retention capacity of phenanthrene and six heavy metals in a column experiment with unsaturated gravimetric water flow lasting for 3 weeks. The results suggest that biochar as a component in green roof substrates perform better than traditional materials, concerning retention of the tested pollutants, and that different types of biochar have different properties in this respect.

SUBMITTER: Piscitelli L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5773637 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Assessment of addition of biochar to filtering mixtures for potential water pollutant removal.

Piscitelli Lea L Rivier Pierre-Adrien PA Mondelli Donato D Miano Teodoro T Joner Erik J EJ

Environmental science and pollution research international 20171107 3

Green roofs are used increasingly to alleviate peaks of water discharge into the sewage systems in urban areas. Surface runoff from roofs contain pollutants from dry and wet deposition, and green roofs offer a possibility to reduce the amounts of pollutants in the water discharged from roofs by degradation and filtering. These pollutants would otherwise enter wastewater treatments plants and ultimately end up in sewage sludge that is spread on agricultural soils. The most common substrates used ...[more]

PMID: 29116532

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Project description:Alloys or smelted metal mixtures have served as cornerstones of human civilization. The advent of smelted copper and tin, i.e., bronze, in the 4th millennium B.C. in Mesopotamia has pioneered the preparation of other metal composites, such as brass (i.e., mixture of copper and zinc), since the bronze age. The contemporary use of these alloys has expanded beyond using their physical strength. The catalytic chemistry of micron-scale brass or copper-zinc alloy can be utilized to effectively degrade emerging contaminants (ECs) in water, which are presenting significant risks to human health and wildlife. Here, we examine the photocatalytic activity of a commercially available micro-copper-zinc alloy (KDF® 55, MicroCuZn), made with earth abundant metals, for oxidative removal of two ECs. The micron-scale brass is independently characterized for its morphology, which confirms that it has the β-brass phase and that its plasmonic response is around 475 nm. Estriol (E3), a well-known EC, is removed from water with ultraviolet (UV) radiation catalyzed by MicroCuZn and H2O2-MicroCuZn combinations. The synergy between H2O2, UV, and MicroCuZn enhances hydroxyl radical (˙OH) generation and exhibit a strong pseudo-first-order kinetic degradation of E3 with a decay constant of 1.853 × 10-3 min-1 (r 2 = 0.999). Generation of ˙OH is monitored with N,N-dimethyl-4-nitrosoaniline (pNDA) and terephthalic acid (TA), which are effective ˙OH scavengers. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis has confirmed ZnO/CuO-Cu2O film formation after UV irradiation. The second EC studied here is Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, a psychotropic compound commonly consumed through recreational or medicinal use of marijuana. The exceptionally high solids-water partitioning propensity of THC makes adsorption the dominant removal mechanism, with photocatalysis potentially supporting the removal efficacy of this compound. These results indicate that MicroCuZn can be a promising oxidative catalyst especially for degradation of ECs, with possible reusability of this historically significant material with environmentally-friendly attributes.

Project description:Biochar (BC) and magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles (MNP) have both received considerable recent attention in part due to their potential use in water treatment. While both are effective independently in the removal of a range of anionic metals from aqueous solution, the efficacy of these materials is reduced considerably at neutral pH due to decreased metal adsorption and MNP aggregation. In addition to synthetic metal oxide-biochar composites for use in treatment and remediation technologies, aggregates may also occur in nature when pyrolytic carbon is deposited in soils. In this study, we tested whether magnetite synthesized in the presence of biochar leads to increased removal efficiency of hexavalent chromium, Cr(VI), at the mildly acidic to neutral pH values characteristic of most natural and contaminated aqueous environments. To do so, magnetite nanoparticles and biochar produced from ground willow were synthesized to form composites (MNP-BC). Batch studies showed that MNP-BC markedly enhanced both adsorption and reduction of Cr(VI) from aqueous solution at acidic to neutral pH as compared to MNP and BC separately, suggesting a strong synergetic effect of hybridizing Fe3O4 with BC. Mechanistically, the Cr(VI) removal processes occurred through both adsorption and intraparticle diffusion followed by reduction to Cr(III). Synchrotron-based X-ray absorption spectroscopy analyses confirmed that Cr(VI) was reduced at the surface of MNP-BC, with electrons derived directly from both biochar and magnetite at low pH, while at near-neutral pH, biochar increased Cr(VI) reduction by inhibiting MNP aggregation. Extended X-ray absorption fine structure fitting results confirmed that the Cr(III) precipitates consist of Cr(OH)3 and chromite (Cr2FeO4) nanoparticles. Our results demonstrate that MNP-BC composites have great potential as a material for the treatment of chromate-containing aqueous solutions across a wide range of pH values, and provide information valuable broadly relevant to soils and sediments that contain biochar.

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Assessment of addition of biochar to filtering mixtures for potential water pollutant removal.

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Assessment of addition of biochar to filtering mixtures for potential water pollutant removal.

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