Soil remediation using tannin’s hydrogel: a potential solution to forestry and mining industries

Within the Canadian context, this project is expected to solve an environmental problem related to the contamination of soils by heavy metals from the mining industry and deal with a great amount of forest waste generated from the forest industry. This project aims to develop tannin hydrogel from wood residues from Canada, evaluate its performance to adsorb metal pollutants, and compare it with commercial hydrogel based on fossil fuels, sodium polyacrylate. For that, the tannin, extracted from the Canadian forestall waste, will be used to produce a hydrogel and applied to the soil to evaluate its potential adsorption. The latter will be characterized as pH, elemental composition, morphology, surface chemistry, specific surface area, and pore volume. Then, a laboratory dispositive in the form of a column will be developed with three layers, the hydrogel under the contaminated soil and above the standard soil. A controlled water flow will be added to the system, to leach the contaminants and allow the hydrogel to swallow and adsorb it. The soils will be characterized for metal content and these results will be compared to the sodium polyacrylate hydrogel to evaluate which polymer is the most efficient for metal adsorption.

Faculty Supervisor:

Flavia Braghiroli

Student:

Partner:

Faculdade de Tecnologia de Sorocaba

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Education

University:

Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue

Program: