Soils contaminated with heavy metals electro phytoremediation eith innovative methods

The decrease in the ability of the ecosystem to renew itself as a result of human intervention has caused pollution of the air and water environment as well as soil resources. In addition, heavy metals found in soils are recognized as the first hazardous substance pollutants that have toxicity due to very high concentrations and can show carcinogenic effects. The presence of these pollutants in the environment has always caused adverse effects on the health of humans, plants and animals. Since the cleanup of contaminated soils by chemical and physical methods requires high economic costs, techniques that are considered as cheap alternatives are used instead. These techniques are phytoremediation, electro-phytoremediation, electro-kinetic methods in which plants are used to remediate contaminated soils and which have started to be used in the removal of heavy metals. Within the scope of this study, four types of pots with different working conditions of soils contaminated with Pb, Cd, Cr, Cu and B elements were established. There are 12 pots in total and four of these pots represent different control groups: phytoremediation, electro phytoremediation, electro kinetics and sample samples. With this objective, mung, sunflower and canola plants were studied in soils amended with Pb, Cd, Cr, Cu and B elements using the same periodic application of 30 V voltage and 4 hours of continuous DC current for 30 days. The use of graphite electrodes showed better removal of heavy metals. A moderate increase in pH was observed in the phytoremediation system with electrical stimulation. In addition, in the electro phytoremediation experiment, maximum Cr, Cu, B were absorbed in sunflower plant and maximum Cd, Pb were absorbed in canola plant and in the phytoremediation alone experiment, maximum Cr, Cu and B were absorbed in mung plant and Cd, B were absorbed in sunflower plant. According to the results, the effect of electric current is more on sunflower plant. Based on the results, the amount of heavy metal elements absorbed per kilogram dry weight of plants was determined using ICP device. These results show that electro-phytoremediation technique is promising for the treatment of heavy metal contaminated soils.