Dr Elizabeth Rylott

About

Dr Liz Rylott is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Novel Agricultural Product within the Department of Biology, and Co-Theme lead for Food Water & Waste at the York Environmental Sustainability Institute (YESI), at the University of York.

Background: About one sixth of global cropland is contaminated with toxic metals and metalloids at levels that exceed agricultural and human health safety thresholds. Plants can be used to remediate these abundant, polluted environments ‘locking away’ low value, toxic elements back into the geology of the soil. But some elements, nickel, platinum group and noble metals, and rare earth elements are critical components in an increasing array of technologies, and particularly in those used to tackle climate change such as electric vehicle batteries, solar panels and wind turbines.

Contribution to the Elemental Mission Hub:  Liz’s research group works to develop plants to remediate metal, radionuclides and organic pollution and selectively recover high value technology critical metals from contaminated soils and wastes. Working with chemists, they are developing pyrolysis-based techniques to optimise production of platform chemicals and biofuels from metal-rich biomass. The research is being actively translated into biomass crop species such as switchgrass and willow to produce ‘real world’ plants for environmental restoration and metal recovery in-the-field.

Key areas of expertise:

• Plant biotechnology
• Biomass crops
• Phytoremediation
• Plant- based recovery of metals from wastes and soils

Links

University of York personal website

Co-Theme lead Food, Water & Waste at the York Environmental Sustainability Institute (YESI)

Linked-in  @LizRylott