Investigating the effect of plant-derived amendments on PAHs degradation in brownfield contaminated soils

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a class of persistant organic compounds of major concern that tend to accumulate in the environment, damaging ecosystems and health. Brownfields represent an important tank for PAHs that require remediation.
As an alternative to environmentally aggressive, expensive and often disruptive soil remediation strategies, experiences have been carried on to understand and develop techniques based on bioremediation and phytoremediation.
PAHs degradation experiments were conducted in microcosms (laboratory scale) in order to determine whether several plant-derived amendments could enhance bioremediation. Briefly, samples of aged contaminated soils were treated with different concentrations of Medicago sativa or Trifolium pratense root exudates or dried roots, commercial saponin, a natural surfactant found in some plant roots such as some Fabaceae, and some samples were left unamended as controls.
Soil samples were incubated for two and four weeks at controlled temperature (28°C). Carbon dioxide emission was monitored throughout the whole incubation. At the end of each experiment, dehydrogenase activity was measured as an indicator of microbiological activity and residual PAHs were determined using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Fluorimetric Detection (HPLC-FLD). In total, eleven amendment modalities and two incubation periods were tested and repeated four times.
Preliminary experiments show promising results as amended samples seem to show different respiration activities. Ongoing studies will allow discussion as to whether or not PAHs degradation is influenced by the different modalities and if there are any differences according to the nature and concentration of the amendment.