Project Overview

Adsorption is one of the most efficient ways to remove pollutants from contaminated land and water. Low cost and high efficiency adsorbents would increase economic efficiency, which is especially beneficial to large scale land and water reclamation approaches. Our team uses natural materials and industry by-products as low or no-cost raw materials, including agricultural waste derived biochars, coal derived humic products and poultry feather biopolymers. Our FES research on energy industry contaminant remediation developed and tested novel amendments for water inorganics and oil sands organics. We will expand amendment use to hydrocarbons, a common, difficult to remediate impact of our energy industry. We will use our amendments to ameliorate soil, enhance revegetation, assess hydrocarbon degrading microbial processes and phytoremediation potential as nature based solutions. By restoring soil quality and ecological function, amendments can promote carbon storage, and will facilitate clean energy and mining with low environmental footprints, including keeping materials out of landfills.