- 10 August 2007 -

System can reduce nutrient drainage

Students at the University of Illinois have won a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) award to develop a filtration system to reduce the amount of nutrients draining off of agricultural fields.

The EPA awarded the team $75,000 which was used to conduct lab experiments that used soil columns to test a variety of wood chips and other biomaterials as filtration material to clean water.

"Water quality is a big problem and concern in many developing countries, so we have teamed up with the G.P. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in India , and we will be installing one of these systems in India," said Kalita.

"We even proposed to apply it to wastewater treatment in residential septic systems," Good added.

"This system isn't limited to one area or one location. It's pretty much global," Davidson said. "And water quality is an issue everyone should be concerned with."

The group will return to Washington, D.C. next year to present the final results of their research to the EPA.

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