Phytoremediation at Argonne National Lab

Phytoremediation is the use of plants and trees to remove or neutralize contaminants in polluted soil or water. Argonne scientist M. Cristina Negri leads the phytotechnologies R&D activities at Argonne. Phytotechnologies encompass the treatment of environmental problems through the use of plants. She was the scientific lead in the deployment and monitoring of multi-acre field scale phytoremediation installations and for the development of a phyto- and bio-remediation research and development project in Russia.

Transcript

00:00:01 [Music] fter remediation is the cleanup or remediation of the environment through the use of plants it can work in different ways uh in the simplest way plants are planted on a contaminated soil or groundwater and they through their Roots they take up pollutants as well as everything else that they normally take up along with water and

00:00:20 they'll process it in their system and therefore remove it from the original environment interestingly the the plants that we're using for phyto mediation are also plants that are being developed as biofuel crops in other words plants that can create the alternative renewable energy that we need as a country to not be dependent on foreign oil and so the interesting thing is that

00:00:43 we can actually grow these plants in land that's contaminated or land that's not particularly suitable for mainstream Agriculture and get a second crop out of it while we clean up we we clean up the environment and that's a very powerful um opportunity my dream would be to work on something like the Chicago River uh where there's a great deal of industrial um

00:01:09 settlements along the banks uh yet it's such a wonderful resource for the city and uh I could easily see how that whole land could be planted with Willows and other native plants and and and cotton woods and those would U stop the pollutants from getting into the water clean up the water and uh it could actually double up as Trails for bicycles taking people back and forth

00:01:32 and that would be a tremendous opportunity to put together you know our science and our approach to to Growing these plant for for this cleanup purposes with a I don't know an urban landscape uh approach to say how do you put this into a city you know make it pretty make it nice make it vibrant for people to use so that would actually be the fun next thing to do