Effects of composite environmental materials on the passivation and biochemical effectiveness of Pb and Cd in soil: Analyses at the ex-planta of the Pak-choi root and leave

Passivation of soil heavy metals using environmental materials is an important method or important in situ remediation measure. There are more studies on inorganic environmental materials for heavy metal passivation, but not enough studies on organic and their composite environmental materials with inorganic ones. In order to reveal the passivation effect of coal-based ammoniated humic acid (CAHA), biochemical humic acid (BHA), biochar (BC) and other organic types and inorganic environmental materials such as zeolites (ZL) on soil heavy metals and their biological effectiveness. The microstructures of these materials were analyzed by Scanning electron microscope (SEM). The main components of the environmental materials were analyzed by Energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS), Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and X-ray diffraction spectrum (XRD) to elucidate the mechanism of passivation of heavy metals in soil by these environmental materials. The study was conducted to investigate the effects of different types of environmental materials and their combi-nations on the passivation effect and biological effectiveness of Pb and Cd complex contamination in soil by means of soil incubation and pot experiments using single-factor and multifactor multilevel orthogonal experi-mental designs. Soil incubation experiments proved that the effective state of soil Pb and Cd in T7 was reduced by 13.40% and 11.07%, respectively. The extreme difference analysis determined the optimized formulation of soil lead and cadmium passivation as BHA: CAHA: BC: ZL = 3.5:5:20:10. The pot experiment proved that the application of composite environmental materials led to the reduction of lead and cadmium content and increase of biomass of Pak-choi, and the optimal dosage of optimized composite environmental materials was 23.1 g/kg.

Automated summary

Passivation of soil heavy metals using environmental materials is an important method for in situ remediation. This study investigated the passivation effect and biological effectiveness of different types of organic and inorganic environmental materials on soil heavy metals, and analyzed the microstructures and main components of these materials to elucidate the mechanism of passivation. The results showed that composite environmental materials reduced the content of lead and cadmium in soil and increased the biomass of Pak-choi, with an optimal dosage of 23.1 g/kg.