Abstract
This work investigated the spatial profile and source analysis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in soil that surrounds coal-fired power plants in Xuzhou, China. High-throughput sequencing was employed to investigate the composition and structure of soil bacterial communities. The total concentration of 15 PAHs in the surface soils ranged from 164.87 to 3494.81 μg/kg dry weight. The spatial profile of PAHs was site-specific with a concentration of 1400.09–3494.81 μg/kg in Yaozhuang. Based on the qualitative and principal component analysis results, coal burning and vehicle emission were found to be the main sources of PAHs in the surface soils. The phylogenetic analysis revealed differences in bacterial community compositions among different sampling sites. Proteobacteria was the most abundant phylum, while Acidobacteria was the second most abundant. The orders of Campylobacterales, Desulfobacterales and Hydrogenophilales had the most significant differences in relative abundance among the sampling sites. The redundancy analysis revealed that the differences in bacterial communities could be explained by the organic matter content. They could also be explicated by the acenaphthene concentration with longer arrows. Furthermore, OTUs of Proteobacteria phylum plotted around particular samples were confirmed to have a different composition of Proteobacteria phylum among the sample sites. Evaluating the relationship between soil PAHs concentration and bacterial community composition may provide useful information for the remediation of PAH contaminated sites.
Highlights
As an important class of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are mainly originated from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, forest fires, crop straw and other organic materials that continuously burn [1,2]
Principal component analysis (PCA) was employed to analyze the data groups of PAHs concentrations in order to compare the profiles of each potential PAH source using SPSS 18.0 software
The contamination level of PAHs in soil can be divided into four classes: no contamination
Summary
As an important class of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are mainly originated from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, forest fires, crop straw and other organic materials that continuously burn [1,2]. It is generally believed that coal combustion in coal-fired power plants is the main source of PAH pollution in surrounding farmland. It is crucial to the repair strategy formulation to determine whether or not coal combustion is the only pollution source for coal-fired power plants in the surrounding farmland. Based on these reasons, this work investigated the surrounding soil of. This study is intended to provide broad insights for assessing the impact of coal-fired power plants on PAHs emission and surrounding environments. These for location sitesthe include theoffollowing: power plants on PAHs emission and surrounding environments.
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