Carbon cleaners: magnetic biochars for remediation of contaminated agricultural soils

Water scarcity is driving the application of effluent water to agricultural land, risking persistent and non bio-degradable pollutants including heavy metals, pseticides, pharmaceutical and personal care products entering the food chain. Conventional biological wastewater treatment technologies are not designed to remove these pollutants, so additional end-of-pipe or remedial in-situ soil treatment processes need to be developed to reduce pollutant concentrations. This multidisciplinary project focuses on the production and application of magnetically separable biochars for contaminated soil and wastewater treatment in the context of agriculture and food security.
Biochars are a form of carbonized biomass, derived from virgin biomass or waste feedstocks. These 'carbon cleaners' have a demonstrated capacity to adsorb a wide range of inorganic and organic pollutants. Simple separation from a process or soil can be achieved by doping biochars with magnetic particles and using magnetic separation. However the application of these materials to remediation of soil matrices has yet to be demonstrated. Project objectives:
-Characterisation of selected biomass/waste feedstocks
-Production of biochars and magnetic biochars
-Application to soil matrices for removal of selected pollutants, including assessment of adsorption capacity, selectivity and magnetic separation
-Assessment of impacts of magnetic biochar application and removal on soil biome