The status and prospects of management of arsenic-laden plant biomass
摘要
Arsenic (As) is a widespread contaminant in several parts of the world including agricultural lands in countries like Bangladesh and India. Arsenic from irrigation water and farm soil enters into edible parts of plants and then to humans. Hence, As contamination of the environment is a threatening issue that needs to be tackled via sustainable low cost approaches. Phytoremediation is a solar-energy driven, water and soil nutrient dependent, plant tolerance based strategy for metal(loid)s remediation. Phytoremediation has been studied over the years and several high As accumulating, high biomass, short life cycle and / or economically used plants have been identified. However, the research on the safe disposal and management of plant biomass after phytoremediation project is scanty. Phytoremediation projects may generate tonnes of plant biomass contaminated with As whose safe disposal or subsequent use for financial gains is necessary. The options for biomass management include aerobic and anaerobic fermentation, As extraction, composting, extraction of useful chemicals and metabolites of plants, and bioenergy generation. These approaches are aimed at reducing the total biomass of plants so as to lessen the management problems, to extract most of the As from the biomass and to further re-use biomass for financial gains. This review discusses aspects of plant biomass management after phytoremediation. In future, more research should be focused on biomass management after remediation to enhance acceptability, economic suitability and sustainability of phytoremediation.