TY - JOUR

T1 - Phytoremediation-biorefinery tandem for effective clean-up of metal contaminated soil and biomass valorisation

AU - Sotenko, Maria

AU - Coles, Stuart

AU - Barker, Guy

AU - Song, Lijiang

AU - Jiang, Ying

AU - Longhurst, Philip

AU - Romanova, Tamara

AU - Shuvaeva, Olga

AU - Kirwan, Kerry

PY - 2017/11/2

Y1 - 2017/11/2

N2 - During the last few decades, phytoremediation process has attracted much attention because of the growing concerns about the deteriorating quality of soil caused by anthropogenic activities. Here, a tandem phytoremediation/biorefinery process was proposed as a way to turn phytoremediation into a viable commercial method by producing valuable chemicals in addition to cleaned soil. Two agricultural plants (Sinapis alba and Helianthus annuus) were grown in moderately contaminated soil with ca. 100 ppm of Ni and further degraded by a fungal lignin degrader—Phanerochaete chrysosporium. Several parameters have been studied, including the viability of plants, biomass yield, and their accumulating and remediating potentials. Further, downstream processing showed that up to 80% of Ni can be easily extracted from contaminated biomass by aqueous extraction at mild conditions. Finally, it was demonstrated that the growth of plants on the contaminated soil could be degraded by P. chrysosporium, and the effect of nickel and biomass pretreatment on the solid-state fermentation was studied. The proposed and studied methodology in this work could pave the way for successful commercialization of the phytoremediation process in the near future.

AB - During the last few decades, phytoremediation process has attracted much attention because of the growing concerns about the deteriorating quality of soil caused by anthropogenic activities. Here, a tandem phytoremediation/biorefinery process was proposed as a way to turn phytoremediation into a viable commercial method by producing valuable chemicals in addition to cleaned soil. Two agricultural plants (Sinapis alba and Helianthus annuus) were grown in moderately contaminated soil with ca. 100 ppm of Ni and further degraded by a fungal lignin degrader—Phanerochaete chrysosporium. Several parameters have been studied, including the viability of plants, biomass yield, and their accumulating and remediating potentials. Further, downstream processing showed that up to 80% of Ni can be easily extracted from contaminated biomass by aqueous extraction at mild conditions. Finally, it was demonstrated that the growth of plants on the contaminated soil could be degraded by P. chrysosporium, and the effect of nickel and biomass pretreatment on the solid-state fermentation was studied. The proposed and studied methodology in this work could pave the way for successful commercialization of the phytoremediation process in the near future.

KW - biorefinery

KW - lignocellulose degradation

KW - metal accumulating plants

KW - nickel

KW - Phanerochaete chrysosporium

KW - phytoremediation

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85032733697&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/15226514.2016.1267705

DO - 10.1080/15226514.2016.1267705

M3 - Article

C2 - 27936864

AN - SCOPUS:85032733697

VL - 19

SP - 965

EP - 975

JO - International Journal of Phytoremediation

JF - International Journal of Phytoremediation

SN - 1522-6514

IS - 11

ER -