TITLE:
Sustainable Land Management: Growing Miscanthus in Soils Contaminated with Heavy Metals
AUTHORS:
Valentina Pidlisnyuk, Larry Erickson, Sergiy Kharchenko, Tetyana Stefanovska
KEYWORDS:
Phytoremediation, Miscanthus, Biomass, Heavy Metals, Cobalt, Copper
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Environmental Protection,
Vol.5 No.8,
June
16,
2014
ABSTRACT: Miscanthus
grows well in some marginal and contaminated soils, and it has the potential to
be used as a biofuel. Copper and cobalt are heavy metals that sometimes are
present as contaminants in soils at concentrations that may impact the safety
of products that are harvested. Laboratory research has been conducted with Miscanthus sacchariflorus M. to
investigate metal uptake of copper and cobalt because metal concentrations in
the harvested parts of miscanthus are important for biofuel applications. The
results show that the use of miscanthus for
biofuel from soil contaminated by heavy metals depends mainly on the nature of
contaminated metals: cobalt was detected only for highest treated concentration
of metal and mainly in the roots. The highest concentration of copper was
detected in the roots however this metal was detected in stems and leaves of
miscanthus as well. Miscanthus biomass
harvested from cobalt contaminated soil may be used for energy production
because the harvested part accumulated only limited traces of the metal. The
experimental results are in reasonable agreement with other results from the
literature.