Biochar: an effective amendment for remediating contaminated soil

Enhancing soil health, microbial count, and hydrophilic methomyl and hydrophobic lambda-cyhalothrin remediation with biochar and nano-biochar

Pesticide contamination and soil degradation present significant challenges in agricultural ecosystems, driving extensive exploration of biochar (BC) and nano-biochar (NBC) as potential solutions. This study examines their effects on soil properties, microbial communities, and the fate of two key pesticides: the hydrophilic methomyl (MET) and the hydrophobic lambda-cyhalothrin (LCT), at different concentrations (1%, 3%, and 5% w w-1) in agricultural soil. Through a carefully designed seven-week black bean pot experiment, the results indicated that the addition of BC/NBC significantly influenced soil dynamics. Soil pH and moisture content (MC) notably increased, accompanied by a general rise in soil organic carbon (SOC) content. However, in BC5/NBC5 treatments, SOC declined after the 2nd or 3rd week. Microbial populations, including total plate count (TPC), phosphate-solubilizing bacteria (PSB), and nitrogen-fixing bacteria (NFB), showed dynamic responses to BC/NBC applications. BC1/NBC1 and BC3/NBC3 applications led to a significant increase in microbial populations, whereas BC5/NBC5 treatments experienced a decline after the initial surge. Furthermore, the removal efficiency of both MET and LCT increased with higher BC/NBC concentrations, with NBC demonstrating greater efficacy than BC. Degradation kinetics, modeled by a first-order equation, revealed that MET degraded faster than LCT. These findings underscore the profound impact of BC/NBC on pesticide dynamics and microbial communities, highlighting their potential to transform sustainable agricultural practices.

Elemental composition, rare earths and minority elements in organic and conventional wines from volcanic areas: The Canary Islands (Spain)

The organic wine market is rapidly growing worldwide, both in terms of production and consumption. However, the scientific literature is not conclusive regarding differences in the elemental composition of wines according to their production method, including both major and trace elements. Minerals can be present in wine as a result of both anthropogenic and environmental factors. To date, this has not been evaluated in volcanic contexts, neither has the emergent issue of rare earths and other minority elements as potential sources of food contamination. This study using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) analyses organic and conventional wines produced in the Canary Islands (Spain), an archipelago of volcanic origin, to compare their content of 49 elements, including rare earths and minority elements. Our results showed that organic wines presented lower potential toxic element content on average than their conventional counterparts, but differences were not significant. Geographical origin of the wine samples (island) was the only significant variable differentiating wine samples by their composition profiles. By comparing our data with the literature, no agreement was found in terms of differences between organic and conventionally-produced wines. This confirms that other factors prevail over elemental composition when considering differences between wine production methods. Regarding the toxicological profile of the wines, five samples (three organic and two conventional) exceeded the maximum limits established by international legislation. This highlights the need for stricter analytical monitoring in the Canary Islands, with a particular focus on Cu and Ni concentration, and potentially in other volcanic areas.

Anaerobic Dehalogenation by Reduced Aqueous Biochars

Dehalogenation is one of the most important reactions for eliminating trace organic pollutants in natural and engineering systems. This study investigated the dehalogenation of a model organohalogen compound, triclosan (TCS), by aqueous biochars (a-BCs) (<450 nm). We found that TCS can be anaerobically degraded by reduced a-BCs with a pseudo first-order degradation rate constant of 0.0011-0.011 h^-1. The 288 h degradation fraction of TCS correlated significantly with the amount of a-BC-bound electrons (0.055 ± 0.00024 to 0.11 ± 0.0016 mol e^-/mol C) available for donation after 24 h of pre-reduction by Shewanella putrefaciens CN32. Within the reduction period, the recovery of chlorine based on residual TCS and generated Cl^- ranged from 73.6 to 85.2%, implying that a major fraction of TCS was fully dechlorinated, together with mass spectroscopic analysis of possible degradation byproducts. Least-squares numerical fitting, accounting for the reactions of hydroquinones/semiquinones in a-BCs with TCS and byproducts, can simulate the reaction kinetics well (R² > 0.76) and suggest the first-step dechlorination as the rate-limiting step among the possible pathways. These results showcased that the reduced a-BCs can reductively degrade organohalogens with potential applications for wastewater treatment and groundwater remediation. While TCS was used as a model compound in this study, a-BC-based degradation can be likely applied to a range of redox-sensitive trace organic compounds.

Application of Rice-Straw Biochar and Microorganisms in Nonylphenol Remediation: Adsorption-Biodegradation Coupling Relationship and Mechanism

Biochar adsorption presents a potential remediation method for the control of hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) pollution in the environment. It has been found that HOCs bound on biochar become less bioavailable, so speculations have been proposed that HOCs will persist for longer half-life periods in biochar-amended soil/sediment. To investigate how biochar application affects coupled adsorption-biodegradation, nonylphenol was selected as the target contaminant, and biochar derived from rice straw was applied as the adsorbent. The results showed that there was an optimal dosage of biochar in the presence of both adsorption and biodegradation for a given nonylphenol concentration, thus allowing the transformation of nonylphenol to be optimized. Approximately 47.6% of the nonylphenol was biodegraded in two days when 0.005 g biochar was added to 50 mg/L of nonylphenol, which was 125% higher than the relative quantity biodegraded without biochar, though the resistant desorption component of nonylphenol reached 87.1%. All adsorptive forms of nonylphenol (f_rap, f_slow, f_r) decreased gradually during the biodegradation experiment, and the resistant desorption fraction of nonylphenol (f_r) on biochar could also be biodegraded. It was concluded that an appropriate amount of biochar could stimulate biodegradation, not only illustrating that the dosage of biochar had an enormous influence on the half-life periods of HOCs but also alleviating concerns that enhanced HOCs binding by biochar may cause secondary pollution in biochar-modified environment.