TITLE:
Phytoremediation Dynamic Model as an Assessment Tool in the Environmental Management
AUTHORS:
Rafael R. Canales-Pastrana, Marlio Paredes
KEYWORDS:
Phytoremediation; Plant Physiology Model; System Dynamics; Environmental Management
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Applied Sciences,
Vol.3 No.2,
June
20,
2013
ABSTRACT: Phytoremediation is considered a viable and cost effective emerging
technology to clean-up trace elements. This approach has not
been fully commercialized due the existence of various concerns about it. Those
can be summarized as the uncertainty of the system behaviors at different
scenarios, such as: contaminant, contaminant concentration and the behaviors of
the physiology in the plant. Previous approaches have implemented diverse mathematical
algorithms to characterize phytoremediation systems, such as: differential
equation solution sets, statistical correlation and system dynamics approach.
Phytoremediation Dynamic Model (PDM) employed the classical plant structure to
simulate plant-soil-pollutant interaction. This model has proved its capability to
mimic phytovolatilization processes of mercury chloride, obtaining
more than 95% of correlation between the experimental data, and also provides
the capability to know the contaminant flow rate and its concentration in plant
tissue. The differential equations system which describes the model includes a
comprehensive parameter which encapsulates plant bioavailability dependence in
the contaminant-media interaction as a novel approach because this has not been
found on the literature previously. PDM has proved the ability to mimic plant
response as a function of contaminant concentration and the applicability as an
assessment tool for phytoremediation system performance.