Electrokinetic remediation of fluorine-contaminated soil and its impact on soil fertility

Abstract

Compared to soil pollution by heavy metals and organic pollutants, soil pollution by fluorides is usually ignored in China. Actually, fluorine-contaminated soil has an unfavorable influence on human, animals, plants, and surrounding environment. This study reports on electrokinetic remediation of fluorine-contaminated soil and the effects of this remediation technology on soil fertility. Experimental results showed that electrokinetic remediation using NaOH as the anolyte was a considerable choice to eliminate fluorine in contaminated soils. Under the experimental conditions, the removal efficiency of fluorine by the electrokinetic remediation method was 70.35%. However, the electrokinetic remediation had a significant impact on the distribution and concentrations of soil native compounds. After the electrokinetic experiment, in the treated soil, the average value of available nitrogen was raised from 69.53 to 74.23 mg/kg, the average value of available phosphorus and potassium were reduced from 20.05 to 10.39 mg/kg and from 61.31 to 51.58 mg/kg, respectively. Meanwhile, the contents of soil available nitrogen and phosphorus in the anode regions were higher than those in the cathode regions, but the distribution of soil available potassium was just the opposite. In soil organic matter, there was no significant change. These experiment results suggested that some steps should be taken to offset the impacts, after electrokinetic treatment.

Shoot-root signal circuit: Phytoremediation of heavy metal contaminated soil

“…For example, “Minamata disease” in Japan is caused by Hg pollution ( Eto, 2000 ). Both physical remediation and chemical remediation have the disadvantages of high treatment cost, large treatment project ( Ferrucci et al., 2017 ; Mu'azu et al., 2018 ; Asadollahfardi et al., 2021 ), and disturbing the soil microenvironment ( Zhou et al., 2015 ). Although microbial remediation can effectively deal with heavy metal pollution in soil, it also has some shortcomings such as demanding environmental conditions (such as specific pH, temperature, etc.)…”