Des plantes pour la chimie verte

In Saint-Laurent-Le-Minier and in many abandoned industrial and mining sites, the soil is full of contaminants (cadmium, lead, zinc, etc.). Thankfully, in this case like in many other instances, Mother Nature comes to the rescue by providing us with depolluting plants, such as the legume Anthyllis vulneraria which absorbs zinc.
Chemist Claude Grison explains this depollution by phytoextraction. The cherry on the cake is that this biomass can be recycled using ecocatalysis, which allows new molecules with high added value to be manufactured.