Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are bacteria capable of promoting plant growth by colonizing the plant root. For a long period PGPR were mainly used for assisting plants to uptake nutrients from the environment or preventing plant diseases. Phytoremediation is a new and promising approach to remove contaminants in the environment. But using plants alone for remediation confronts man...

The aim of this study was to investigate the potential utility of ethanol washing for remediating soils contaminated with polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), as a cost-efficient alternative to conventional remediation methods of PCDD/F-contaminated soils. Initially, screening experiments were performed with a two-level full factorial design to ex...

With the rapid economic development, China is experiencing increased land contamination and lead poisoning problem in recent years, which is no longer restricted to isolated incidents and locations. There is an urgent need to remediate the lead contaminated soils to protect the public’s health. However, contaminated land remediation and determination of remediation target value has been neglect...

Use of nanotechnology has proven to be a promising approach toward remediation of all phases of environment. The aim of this work is to investigate the effects of different parameters on using iron III oxide nanoparticles in a continuous flow configuration for the removal of Cd2+ ionsfrom contaminated soils. Also selective sequential extraction tests are carried out to evaluate the nanoparticle...

Bioremediation of metal-contaminated wastestreams has been successfully demonstrated. Normally, whole cells or microbial exopolymers are used to concentrate and/or precipitate metals in the wastestream to aid in metal removal. Analogous remediation of metal-contaminated soils is more complex because microbial cells or large exopolymers do not move freely through the soil. The use of microbially...

This investigation was undertaken to determine the factors influencing electrokinetic remediation of soils from petroleum pollutants. The remediation method was applied in two versions: (i) static and (ii) flowing, when a sample was washed with leaching solution. It was found that all the soils studied can be purified using this technique. It was also observed that the mineral and grain-size co...

A practical method for the elimination of PCBs from PCB-contaminated soil has been developed by the combination of Soxhlet extraction using a newly-developed modified Soxhlet extractor possessing an outlet valve on the extraction chamber with the chemical degradation. Various types of PCBs contaminated in soils could be completely extracted in refluxing hexane, and the subsequent hydrodechlorin...

A series of batch tests were conducted to investigate the relative desorption potential of mercury from kaolin and glacial till soils under the effect of three extractant agents, namely, KI, NaEDTA and NaCl (all of them with a concentration of 0.1 M). These tests were conducted under different pH conditions (within a pH range between 2 and 12). Also batch tests using deionized water were perfor...

the increasing production and use of fossil fuels increase the probability of soil source contamination by oil and petroleum products, and pose a hazard to life. there are over 43,000 chemical contaminated sites in canada and usa, with 2,200 of them classified as high risk. in the us, over $10 billion are spent annually on the cleanup of contaminated sites. the primary objective of this study w...