Thermal desorption remediation effects on soil biogeochemical properties and plant performance: Global meta-analysis

Abstract

Soil contamination remains a global problem, and numerous studies have been published for investigating soil remediation. Thermal desorption remediation (TDR) can significantly reduce the contaminants in the soil within a short time and consequently has been used worldwide. However, the soil properties respond to TDR differently and are dependent on the experimental set-up. The causative mechanisms of these differences are yet to be fully elucidated. A statistical meta-analysis was thus undertaken to evaluate the TDR treatment effects on soil properties and plant performance. This review pointed out that soil clay was reduced by 54.2%, while soil sand content was enhanced by 15.2% after TDR. This might be due to the release of cementing agents from clay minerals that resulted in the formation of soil aggregates. Soil electrical conductivity enhanced by 69.5% after TDR, which might be due to the heating-induced loss of structural hydroxyl groups and the consequent liberation of ions. The treatment of TDR leads to the reduction of plant germination rate, length, and biomass by 19.4%, 44.8%, and 20.2%, respectively, compared to that of control soil. This might be due to the residue of contaminants and the loss of soil fertility during the thermal process that inhibited plant germination and growth. Soil pH and sulfate content increased with heating temperature increased, while soil enzyme activities decreased with thermal temperature increased. Overall, the results suggested that TDR treatment has inhibited plant growth as well as ecological restoration.

Keywords

Thermal desorption remediation / Soil biogeochemical properties / Meta-analysis / Heating temperature

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jiaxin Liao: Writing - original draft, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Haowen Guo: Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Sanandam Bordoloi: Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Methodology, Investigation. Denian Li: Writing - review & editing, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Yuanxiang Zhang: Visualization, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Junjun Ni: Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Haoran Yuan: Writing - review & editing, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Xudong Zhao: Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the financial sponsorship from the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2023YFC3905800), Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (2021349), Guangdong Youth Talent Support Program (2021TQ06L121), State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building Science in South China University of Technology (2022ZC01), Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (KCXFZ20211020163816023). The work presented in this paper was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Wuhan (No. 2024040801020271), and the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Public Welfare Research Institutes (No. CKSF20241004/YT). The third author acknowledges the support from FINNCERES flagship and tenure track fund (91160169 (TT/Bordoloi)).

Appendix A. Supporting information

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in the online version at doi:10.1016/j.bgtech.2024.100140.

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