Nutter & Associates have been awarded a grant for PFAS Phytoextraction. A new, promising technology for helping revitalize contaminated soil.
Phytoextraction, also called phytoaccumulation, is the uptake and translocation of contaminants in the soil, or other media, by plant roots into the aboveground portions of the plants. Based on the favorable results of our previous investigation published in the International Journal of Phytoremediation (Huff, et al. 2020) that established the proof of concept, Nutter & Associates, Inc. (NAI), a U.S. Small Business Administration HUBZone-certified company, and Kurt Pennell, Ph.D., P.E. of Brown University are implementing a new phytoremediation investigation to demonstrate the viability of our phytoextraction methodology for PFAS-contaminated sites by conducting an updated grow house investigation using the most effective perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) accumulating plant species identified in our earlier studies and grown in PFOS-impacted soils acquired from up to five DoD facilities employing a statistics-based randomized block design. Successful accumulation during the investigation will be defined by achieving PFOS shoot to soil (or shoot + thatch to soil) concentration ratios that are >1 and which show extrapolated PFOS accumulation rates meeting one-half reduction of the root zone PFOS soil concentrations within a 10-year time horizon. Evidence suggests that this method of phytoremediation can be 50-80% cheaper than other remediation alternatives (EPA National Risk Management Research Laboratory (McCutcheon, S.C. and J.L. Schnoor, 2003)).
