Recovering Metal from Plants to Restore Polluted Land
Dr Rohit Bhagat
PhD or EngD
More land in the UK is becoming contaminated with metals from industry and power generation. To
restore the land the current status quo is to remove the contaminated soil to land fill, which is
expensive, slow and not sustainable.
It is currently possible to use plants to accumulate and concentrate metals from soil, which would
be great to remove metal pollutants. But the only way to deal with the metal rich plants is to landfill
or burn, which is not acceptable. At WMG we have invented a clean–green electrochemical method
to extract the metal from the plants and then convert the biomass into biofuel. Using this process
we will work with partners such as the nuclear decommissioning authority and CL:AIRE to restore
land around the UK.
There are many other applications. For example, it has been found that dust on a typical road in
Birmingham contains more platinum (from catalytic converters) than the South African mines from
which it was collected. It is envisaged that this project will develop and lead to us collecting precious
metals from our road side and land fills.
The research objectives over three years will include some of:
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Build a knowledge of remediation requirements in the UK and globally, pytoremediation
and hyperaccumulator plants and learn about molten salts and electrochemistry.
Build a working cell cable of the extraction process. This will involve basic elements of
design, chemical engineering and risk management.
Extract high purity metal from metal rich plant samples. This will involve optimisation of an
electrochemical process and training in several electrochemical techniques.
Work with industrial partners and Warwick life sciences to deploy the technology on
contaminated land. This will involve analysing planting the right plants for the soil and
gauging the restoration effect after one harvest.
Extract high purity metal from the harvested plants. Prepare a case study showing the costbenefit of employing the technology.
Share the research with our industrial partners, take part in work-shops on land remediation
and disseminate the work into the Environmental Agency.