TreeMediation® Program
Applied Natural Sciences’ innovative TreeMediation® services go beyond the capabilities of traditional phytoremediation. Our patented TreeWell® technology allows access to deeper groundwater and bedrock aquifers, thus providing sustainable nature-based alternatives to conventional remediation techniques.
Benefits of Our Patented Remediation Systems
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On average, the lifetime cost of our remediation system is substantially lower than conventional remedies such as groundwater pump-and-treat systems.
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Our systems have been successfully used to provide contaminant degradation in soil and groundwater under a variety of lithologic conditions. Additionally, our systems can be used to provide hydraulic control of groundwater, thereby mitigating plume migration.
Treatable contaminants include soluble compounds in soil and groundwater, including most VOCs, agricultural inorganics, solubilized metals, PFOA/PFAS, and semi-volatile organics.
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While significant remediation is taking place in the soil and groundwater in the subsurface, the foliage of beautiful willows, hackberries, live oaks, palms, poplars, or spruce trees is growing above the surface.
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As the trees mature, their groundwater uptake rates increase, providing improved hydraulic control and contaminant mass removal. Also, the root system typically hosts robust microbial populations that are capable of degrading many contaminants.
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Our pioneering work in phytoremediation began in 1988. In 1993, Applied Natural Sciences was founded to implement our unique TreeMediation system. We have successfully completed dozens of projects in North America, South America, and Europe, including projects with a wide range of climatic and physiographic conditions.
TreeMediation® Program
The TreeMediation system pumps groundwater and treats many dissolved phased contaminants. Our systems are designed to encourage tree roots to grow vertically downwards towards a targeted contaminant zone, thereby pulling impacted groundwater into the system. Once impacted groundwater is in the TreeWell system, contaminants may be degraded by a bio-reactor effect that is attributable to robust microbial populations within the root zone that can degrade many contaminants prior to contact with the tree. Residual contaminants are then absorbed into the plant and accumulated, metabolized (i.e. degraded), and some molecules are transpired. Our system is the only one of its kind and has a unique record of documented success throughout North America as well as in Europe and South America.
TreeWell® Technology
Our patented TreeWell® technology was developed to allow access to deeper groundwater and bedrock aquifers, thus allowing the replacement of expensive pump-and-treat systems. It mitigates the potential phytotoxic effects of highly-concentrated contaminants through bioremediation processes in the TreeWell unit. This treatment is accomplished by naturally occurring endophytic microbes and enhanced aerobic/anaerobic biodegradation in the soil column.
Phyto-Integrated® Remediation Systems
Our Phyto-Integrated Remediation Services combine our TreeMediation program with other remedial technologies in a holistic effort to achieve remedial objectives. Combining remedial technologies provides aggressive short-term contaminant mass reductions coupled with sustainable long-term treatment and management.
Our TreeMediation systems can easily be incorporated with other more aggressive remedial technologies as part of a combined remedies approach that uses more aggressive technologies such as thermal-based remedies or enhanced bioremediation approaches to directly treat high concentration source areas while using our TreeMediation system to treat dissolved phased portions of the plume. TreeWell technologies can also be coupled with various other remedial technologies including in-situ chemical reduction (ISCR, including ZVI, EZVI, Daramend®), ion exchange resins and other treatment/absorption media such as granular activated carbon) to help address source area or elevated/recalcitrant contaminant conditions.
