Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Plant-Availability Fractionation Of Nickel For Bioremediation, Jason Henrie

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The bioremediation of contaminated soils or the biomining of waste tillings has been explored through the use of hyperaccumulating plants such as S. polygaloides which is a nickel hyperaccumulator. However, it is important to discover which soils are well-suited for this type of process by determining the plant-availability of the nickel. By extracting the nickel sequentially with increasing severity it is possible to determine the chemical distribution, or fractionation, of nickel in a soil. One fraction is already suspected to be plant-available and correlates very well with the results of a previous plant-availability study. A calcareous Millville silt loam which …