Abstract
Contaminated arable land should not be used for the production of food or forage crops but for bioenergy production. As it takes thousands of years for plants to extract enough harmful metals from contaminated soils to reach acceptable low levels (phytoremediation), it is more feasible to leave the toxic elements in the soil. The metal transfer from various kinds of polluted soils to a variety of energy crops was investigated to identify crops with a low metal uptake. The advantages of using slightly contaminated crops for biogas production are that the heavy metals in the biogas plant will not impair the fermentation process. Furthermore, the residues of the biogas production can be returned to the fields where the crops were harvested. All important nutrients are recycled back into the fields (except nitrogen) without exceeding the maximum permissible values for heavy metal of farm fertilisers. Possible energy crops that show a low uptake of toxic elements are: the maize cultivars Padrino and Amadeo, the rye cultivar Vitallo and the barley cultivar Christelle. In contrast, amaranth (spec.) sunflower, the energy beet Kyros, the grass hybrid Miscanthus giganteus and sunchoke should not be cultivated on contaminated soils for bioenergy production due to their high cadmium uptake.
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Sauer, B., Ruppert, H. (2013). Bioenergy Production as an Option for Polluted Soils – A Non-phytoremediation Approach. In: Ruppert, H., Kappas, M., Ibendorf, J. (eds) Sustainable Bioenergy Production - An Integrated Approach. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6642-6_14
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