By Emily Baker
Omar Richard Harvey, a graduate student at Texas A&M University studying water management and hydrological sciences and a recipient of a 2005-2006 Texas Water Resources Institute research grant, investigated the potential for the use of zero-valent iron for reducing the nitrate leaching to groundwater from agricultural systems.
Harvey’s research, advised by Drs. Cristine Morgan and Richard Loeppert, focused on mineral contamination interactions, remediation and treatment of contaminated water, as well as the application of GIS, spatial statistics, modeling to the study of aquatic systems.
Nonpoint nitrate pollution of groundwater can have potentially detrimental effects, both economically and environmentally, on communities that rely on groundwater for drinking. Finding a way to reduce such pollution, which is largely due to high mobility of nitrate in the environment, by reducing the mobility of nitrate in soils is critical for controlling nitrate contamination. Harvey designed a series of laboratory-scale batch and column experiments to determine important factors for developing larger plot- and field-scale studies.
According to Harvey’s results, the presence of zero-valent iron reduces nitrate to ammonium, which is partitioned between the soil surface and the solution phase. Nitrate reduction was accompanied by a decrease in dissolved oxygen and an increase in pH with the magnitude and rate of change being dependent on the amount of nitrate reduction and zero-valent iron in the system.
For the full report of Harvey’s research, click here.
