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The goal of this project is to investigate how adsorbents added to the treatment train in a passive stormwater treatment bioswale will impact the removal of heavy metals, nutrients, and hopefully PFAS from real stormwater collected in the field. We are especially interested in how naturally occurring biofilms under real field conditions will affect adsorption capacity, desorption, and transformation or uptake of heavy metals, nutrients, and PFAS as the adsorbents age after implementation in a bioswale. The project fulfills some of the smaller research goals of a DOD funded project: SERDP proposal number ER18-C3-1230.

Absorption and desorption for copper, zinc, and PFASs will be monitored in rapid small scale columns containing biofilms enriched from soil collected at the OSU-Benton County Green Stormwater Infrastructure Research (OGSIR) facility and compared to the adsorption and desorption of those same compounds in columns without biofilms. The columns are run in triplicate containing biochar, granular activated carbon, and Ottowa sand as a negative control. The results of the sorption and desorption studies will be used to determine how biofilms and natural aging of carbon-based sorbents effect their treatment efficacy for the contaminants being studied.

We are also interested in investigating how different types of adsorbents shape microbial community structure in a bioswale and how that relates to contaminant removal. Therefore, genetic diversity and microbial ecology will be monitored throughout the process to see how enrichment and interaction with the pollutants and adsorbents affects microbial ecology over time compared to the original soil sample.

This project presenter is available for live video chat on Sept. 1, 2020 from 1:00 - 2:45 p.m. PDT.