Biochar amendment as a remediation strategy for surface soils impacted by crude oil.

The impact of organic bulking agents on the biodegradation of petroleum hydrocarbons in crude oil impacted soils was evaluated in batch laboratory experiments. Crude oil impacted soils from three separate locations were amended with fertilizer and bulking agents consisting of biochars derived from walnut shells or ponderosa pine wood chips produced at 900 °C. The batch reactors were incubated at 25 °C and sampled at pre-determined intervals to measure changes in total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) over time. For the duration of the incubation, the soil moisture content was adjusted to 75% of the maximum water holding capacity (MWHC) and prior to each sampling event, the sample was manually stirred. Results show that the addition of fertilizer and bulking agents increased biodegradation rates of TPH. Soil samples amended with ponderosa pine wood biochar achieved the highest biodegradation rate, whereas the walnut shell biochar was inhibitory to TPH biodegradation. The beneficial impact of biochars on TPH biodegredation was more pronounced for a soil impacted with lighter hydrocarbons compared to a soil impacted with heavier hydrocarbons. This study demonstrates that some biochars, in combination with fertilizer, have the potential to be a low-technology and eco-friendly remediation strategy for crude oil impacted soils.

Numerical Investigation of Effective Thermal Conductivity of Strut-Based Cellular Structures Designed by Spatial Voronoi Tessellation.

Porous materials possess light weight and excellent thermal insulation performance. For disordered porous structures, the number of seed points is an important design parameter which is closely related to the morphology and mean pore size of the structure. Based on the arrangement of points in three-dimensional space, seven kinds of structures were designed by spatial Voronoi tessellation in this paper. The effect of the number of seed points on effective thermal conductivity for Voronoi was studied. Numerical simulation was conducted to research the effects of structural porosity, filling material and structural orientation on the effective thermal conductivity and heat transfer characteristics. The results showed that the effective thermal conductivity is closely related to the porosity and the matrix material. Different number and arrangement of seed points make the structure have different anisotropic performance due to different thermal paths. In addition, required the least number of seed points was obtained for the designation of isotropic random Voronoi.

Effect of calcium on adsorption capacity of powdered activated carbon.

We investigated the effect of calcium ion on the adsorption of humic acid (HA) (as a target pollutant) by powered activated carbon. The HA adsorption isotherms at different pH and kinetics of two different solutions including HA alone and HA doped Ca(2+), were performed. It was showed that the adsorption capacity of powdered activated carbon (PAC) for HA was markedly enhanced when Ca(2+) was doped into HA. Also, HA and Ca(2+) taken as nitrate were tested on the uptake of each other respectively and it was showed that the adsorbed amounts of both of them were significantly promoted when HA and calcium co-existed. Furthermore, the adsorbed amount of HA slightly decreased with the increasing of Ca(2+) concentration, whereas the amount of calcium increased with the increasing of HA concentration, but all above the amounts without addition. Finally, the change of pH before and after adsorption process is studied. In the two different solutions including HA alone and HA doped Ca(2+), pH had a small rise, but the extent of pH of later solution was bigger.