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Rollinson_Anaerobic digestion of mercury phytoextraction crops with intermediary stage bio waste polymer treatment.pdf (1.55 MB)

Anaerobic digestion of mercury phytoextraction crops with intermediary stage bio-waste polymer treatment

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journal contribution
posted on 2020-08-07, 14:46 authored by Andrew Rollinson, Jayshree Bhuptani, J Beyer, Y Ismawati, Tanja RaduTanja Radu
In laboratory experiments, Lepidium sativum L. and Mentha spicata L. were grown in compost spiked with mercury. After cultivation for 20 and 68 days, respectively, translocation factors of 0.05 ≤ TF ≤ 0.2 (Lepidium sativum) and accumulation factors of 2.2 ≤ AF ≤ 12 (Mentha spicata) were recorded. Plants were then harvested and used as feedstock for bench-scale anaerobic digesters. The reactors operated in continuously-stirred batch mode for a period of ten days. Inhibition of anaerobic biogas production was apparent with one sample set evidencing mercury-induced bacteriostatic toxicity. Otherwise, ex-situ characterization of digestate showed that the reactors were within stable operating range. A canola oil-sulphide polymer derived from bio-waste was also used as an intermediary treatment stage to test its capacity for extracting mercury from half the samples prior to anaerobic digestion, and also from the post-experimentation reactor digestate. The polymer removed mercury from digestate with a 40–50% efficacy across all samples, suggesting its potential as a sludge clean-up option. Anaerobic digestion combined with staged polymer extraction offers a potential route for the disposal of phytoremediation crops and ultimately the recovery of mercury, coincident with the production of a bioenergy vector.

Funding

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under the Supergen Bioenergy Hub Flexible Funding 2017 scheme

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Published in

International Journal of Phytoremediation

Volume

22

Issue

13

Pages

1431-1439

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The authors

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Taylor and Francis under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2020-06-08

Publication date

2020-06-30

Copyright date

2020

ISSN

1522-6514

eISSN

1549-7879

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Tanja Radu Deposit date: 7 August 2020