Biochar for Environmental Remediation: Principles, Applications, and Prospects

Biochar for Environmental Remediation: Principles, Applications, and Prospects synthesizes state-of-the-art knowledge on biochar-based systems for environmental remediation. This book examines a wide variety of biochar applications for the remediation of inorganic, organic, microbial, and emerging contaminants in various environmental media, including drinking water, industrial wastewater, urban stormwater, industrial and indoor air pollution, and contaminated lands and soils.

An increasing body of evidence shows that biochars have potential applications in environmental remediation of contaminants in soils, aqueous systems, and air pollution control. This book uses a systematic approach, covering biochar preparation, properties and characteristics, removal mechanisms, industrial applications, regeneration and disposal of spent biochar, life cycle analysis, and environmental and human health risks. Researchers, engineers, and graduate students will find this to be a valuable reference for understanding opportunities for the use of biochar in environmental remediation as it fills the gaps in existing literature and offers a clear roadmap to guide future research.

• Addresses the whole biochar cycle from preparation, principles of application, industrial application domains, regeneration, recycling and final disposal, life cycle analysis, and environmental and human health risks
• Covers a broad range of inorganic, organic, microbial, and emerging contaminants, providing a one-stop source of biochar information
• Presents applications of biochar in the remediation of diverse environmental media, including drinking water, industrial, wastewater, urban stormwater, acid mine drainage, contaminated lands and soils, and industrial and indoor air pollution control

Dr. Willis Gwenzi is a Professor of biosystems and environmental engineering at the University of Zimbabwe. He researches on environmental remediation, environmental hydrology, water/wastewater treatment, emerging contaminants, antibiotic resistance, medical geology, environmental epidemiology, and novel (bio)materials. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles. His seminal papers on biochar-based water treatment systems and high-technology rare earth elements as emerging contaminants have been rated as Highly Cited and Hot papers in 2019 by the Web of Science. He has supervised several postgraduate students in bioenvironmental system engineering. He is a regular manuscript reviewer for top international journals. He has also acted as an external reviewer for grant proposals for the UK’s NERC, Canada’s MITACS, Chile’s FONDECYT, and the Austrian Science Foundation. He holds the following qualifications: PhD (biosystems and environmental engineering, University of Western Australia), MSc (water resources engineering and management), BSc honors (soil science), and postgraduate certificate (applied groundwater modeling).