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Mitigating Airborne PCB Emissions from Sediments with Black Carbon Materials and PCB-Degrading Biofilms
Goal: Provide environmental science and engineering solutions to decrease the flux of airborne PCBs at Superfund sites.
Objective: Develop novel synergistic coupled sorptive and reactive black carbon materials (e.g., biochars) containing aerobic PCB-degrading biofilms and evaluate the efficacy of these materials to remove LC-PCBs from sediments under variable salinity, temperature, and dissolved oxygen concentrations.
Aims:
1) Optimize tailored black carbon materials with sorptive and reactive properties toward LC-PCBs and the ability to host aerobic PCB-degrading biofilms.
2) Evaluate the performance of black carbon materials containing aerobic PCB-degrading biofilms to lower LC-PCB concentrations in water and air under relevant environmental conditions.
3) Scale up production of biofilm-coated black carbon materials and demonstrate the feasibility of decreasing airborne PCB flux from contaminated sediments at the mesocosm-scale.
Project Team

Tim Mattes, PhD

Qin Dong

Greg LeFevre, PhD

Andres Martinez, PhD

David Ramotowski
