At the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of the University of Strathclyde we are using X-ray computed tomography (XCT) to gain a better understanding of the location and nature of contaminants within plants. This XCT image shows a blade of Reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea), a novel energy grass crop, which has been successfully grown on a historic mine site in the North East of England.
The soils that this plant was grown in contain 13000 mg/kg Pb. The XCT image (showing areas of density above 10g/cm3 in red) allows us to differentiate between parts of the plant with normal density (2-4 g/cm3) and parts that may contain high density metals such as Pb (11.3 g/cm3). Over the course of the CERESiS project we aim to gain an understanding of whether the contamination found in biomass analysis is simply dust on the surface of the plant or actually contaminants absorbed within the biomass. This will then inform pre-treatment options for turning contaminated biomass into biofuels.