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The fate of char in controlling the rate of heavy metal transfer from soil to potato

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Abstract

In this research, the influence of the biochar produced from the gasification of poplar wood and the char obtained from the gasification of the mixture of poplar wood, grass, carton, tire and plastic at 850 °C on the control of transfer of heavy metals [lead (Pb), nickel (Ni) and cadmium (Cd)] in contaminated soil to potato was investigated. A lab-scale reactor was used to produce char. The effect of char structure on the adsorption capacity of heavy metals by potato was determined. In addition, natural zeolite, which was mainly used for the control of heavy metals adsorption from soil to plants, was tested as a reference. The results showed that biochar obtained from poplar wood could reduce the adsorption of the heavy metals up to a higher extent compared to the char produced from mixed wastes. This was because of more amorphous structure, the higher abundance of oxygen-containing functional groups and the higher amount of inorganics in the poplar wood-derived biochar, which increased the rate of physical separation, complexation and ion-exchange of the heavy metals with the biochar. In addition, our results demonstrated that natural zeolite was a suitable material to decline the adsorption of heavy metals by potato, but its effect was weaker than that of poplar wood-derived biochar. Additionally, zeolite negatively affected the growth of potato. The transfer of the metals from contaminated soil to the potato was very sensitive to the amount of char in the soil.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank University of Tabriz and Nanjing Forestry University for their support. This work was also supported by the Program for Taishan Scholars of Shandong Province Government, the key project of agricultural technology of Shandong Province (No. SD2019NJ015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Joint International Research Laboratory of Biomass Energy and Materials, Co-Innovation Center of Efficient Processing and Utilization of Forest Resources, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, P.R. China

    Vahideh Esmaeili & Shu Zhang

  2. School of Material Science and Engineering, University of Jinan, Jinan, 250022, P.R. China

    Xun Hu

  3. Faculty of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

    Mortaza Gholizadeh

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  1. Vahideh Esmaeili
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  2. Shu Zhang
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Correspondence to Xun Hu or Mortaza Gholizadeh.

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Esmaeili, V., Zhang, S., Hu, X. et al. The fate of char in controlling the rate of heavy metal transfer from soil to potato. Chem. Pap. 76, 1171–1183 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11696-021-01937-9

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