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Environmental Fate and Transport of Carbon-based Nanomaterials in Aquatic Ecosystems
Citation:
Avant, B., Chris Knightes, R. Zepp, D. Bouchard, X. Chang, H. Hsieh, Matt Henderson, J. Spear, Brad Acrey, AND Y. Han. Environmental Fate and Transport of Carbon-based Nanomaterials in Aquatic Ecosystems. iEMSs 2018, Fort Collins, CO, June 24 - 28, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
Presented at the 9th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software, "Modelling for Sustainable Food-Energy-Water Systems"
Description:
The industrial use and application of carbon-based nanomaterials (CNMs) have caused a rapid increase in their production over the last two decades. Current analytical methods for detecting CNMs in the environment are lacking, making environmental fate and transport modeling a practical way to estimate environmental concentrations and assess potential ecological risks. The Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program 8 (WASP8) is a dynamic, spatially resolved fate and transport model. Recently, WASP has been updated to incorporate processes for simulating the fate and transport of nanomaterials including heteroaggregation and phototransformation. This study examines the fate and transport of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) in four aquatic systems in the southeastern United States. Sites include a seepage lake, a coastal plains river, a piedmont river and an unstratified, wetland lake. A hypothetical 50-year release is simulated for each site-nanomaterial pair to analyze the distribution between the water column (WC) and sediments. Results show that GO and rGO accumulate predominantly in the WC of the two rivers and seepage lake, but were mainly distributed in the sediments of the wetland lake. MWCNTs were found predominantly in the sediments of the two lakes and the piedmont river, but were almost entirely contained in the WC of the coastal plains river. Downstream sediments show a gradual increase in CNM concentrations. Simulations provide recovery periods of 37+ years for lakes and 1-5 years for rivers to reduce sediment CNM loads by 50% suggesting that CNMs will have long-term ecological effects.
