General information about the project

Acronym: PHYTODEC

Project No: EVK1-CT-1999-00024

Program: EESD

Competition No: EESD-ENV-99-1

Key action: 1 – Sustainable management and Quality of Water

Type of project: RTD

Status: ongoing project ( 1.09.00 – 21.08.04 )

Project duration: 4 years

Co-ordinator: Dr. Jan Japenga, Alterra B.V., Droevendaalsesteeg 3, 6708 PB WAGENINGEN - THE NETHERLANDS

Consortium:

1. Centre National de Recherche sur les Sites et Sols Pollues, Boulevard Lahure, 930, 59505 DOUAI - FRANCE
2. National Research Council of Italy, Piazzale Aldo Moro 7, 00185 ROMA - ITALY
3. Laboratorio de Ensayos e Investigacion es Industriales, Cuesta de Olabeaga 16, 48013 BILBAO - SPAIN
4. Commissariat a’ l Energie Atomique, Rue de la Federation 31-33, 75015 PARIS - FRANCE
5. Technology Transfer Centre GAIKER, Parque Tecnologico de Zamudio Edificio 202, 48170 ZAMUDIO – SPAIN
6. Institute for Ecology of Industrial Areas, 6 Kossutha Street, 40-833 KATOWICE - POLAND

Project description

The main objective of ‘PhytoDec’ is to develop a quantitative tool that can be used in the European Union to decide on the most appropriate soil remediation method or reduction of pollutant migration in the soil profile. On the basis of the carried out research a decision system will be developed to enable choosing the remediation method which would be the most viable for a given site.

The Decision Support System (DSS) will link different factors that together determine the practical applicability of the method. The common language of the resulting decision tool will be the language of money. Therefore, environmental and social benefits have to be transformed in monetary terms to enable their comparison with such factors as monitoring costs, harvesting costs, costs of unproductive land etc.

A few scientific issues that relate to more general aspects of phytoextraction and phytostabilisation progress are addressed in the project:

• possibility of predicting the estimated duration of phytoextraction through modeling the plant bio-availability of heavy metals in soils and dredged sediments;
• deciding whether plant uptake is determined by the bio-available fraction or by plant physiological characteristics; this will be achieved by comparing hyper-accumulators with agricultural crops and non-essential heavy metals with essential heavy metals;
• verifying whether a dilute salt solution extraction procedure is able to mimic bio-availability as an alternative to bio-availability modeling;
• detecting changes in PAH bio-availability when using phytoremediation schemes that are originally optimised for heavy metal phytostabilisation.

The development of the DSS will be accompanied by an ample program of lysimeter and field studies (six sites: four soils, two dredged sediment deposits) that are carried out by project partners in France, Italy, Poland and Spain. A wide variation of soil types, pollution types/levels, phytoremediation schemes is selected to maximise the scope of the DSS validation. An extensive monitoring program (including bio-availability monitoring by soil solution sampling and analysis) is included in the working program. The project management strongly aims at fortifying the existing links with both scientific networks (e.g. COST 837) and industrial networks (e.g. NICOLE). This approach, therefore, should assure both the practical applicability of the DSS for problem-owners and the future incorporation of new emerging results from scientists into the system in a viable and practical way.

Business perspective

The main impact is to contribute to a more effective and equilibrated application of conventional and emerging soil remediation techniques, avoiding errors leading to losses of tax-payer’s and commercial companies money.

Technical perspective

When successful, PhytDec will provide end-users and policy makers in Europe with a validated tool (DSS) to decide whether phytoremediation is applicable or not at their specific heavy metal polluted sites. The DSS relates scientific (soil remediation effectiveness and duration) aspects to cost aspects (land value during remediation, monitoring costs etc.) and social aspects (public acceptance and landscape values during and after phytoremediation etc.). It will contribute to better and healthier environment as it creates possibilities to reduce environmental impact of extended polluted areas at a lower cost, thus permitting community funds to be used for other priority environmental targets.

Applications

Project impacts affect three types of end-users:

• Policy makers and local government,
• Owners of polluted sites, both industrial companies and governments,
• Commercial companies involved in soil remediation and soil management

IETU’s role in the implementation of the project

Polish partner is responsible for carrying out research on stabilization of heavy metals in soil contaminated with inorganic compounds, using various, if possible - inexpensive and locally easily available - stabilizers. The recommended stabilizers include: sewage sludge of high sorptive properties, brown coal and zeolites.

Additional information: http://www.phytodec.nl

Contact person at IETU:

Institute for Ecology of Industrial Areas
Dr Rafał Kucharski
6, Kossutha St.
40-833 Katowice
phone: +48-32-254 60-31
fax: +48-32-254 17-17
e-mail: sas@ietu.katowice.pl

 

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