Bacteria in our Drinking Water

nachoworld writes "Normally we don't like bacteria in our water, but it seems this breakthru will allow us to use sulfate-reducing bacteria to clean up our water. Talk about "bugs" in our soup (ok, ok, I know that viruses are the bugs, bacterias are not, but I couldn't think of another joke)."

Comments

After the bubbles

[Chacham]

After the bacteria clumps all the unwanted materials, how do you get them out?

I want bacteria

[dmatos]

that consume the sulfur and zinc an produce something useful, like alcohol. Where can I get me some of those? Or maybe, we can get them to produce really cheap crack, and offer it to the /. moderators!

Mod me down. Please. I hit karma cap and I don't care.

Re:I want bacteria

[Kingfox]

From reading the article, the bacteria just extract the substances, absorbing them into 'balls'. Having the bacteria actually transform the zinc and sulfur atoms into something else is a bit less feasible. Who knows, bacteria that form vodka from tap water...

I wonder what sort of extraction methods they're planning on using to remove the 'balls' of toxin from the water after the bacteria is added.

Re: Bacteria in our Drinking Water

[keithdowsett]

I think there will be some problems implementing this as a water treatment for incoming water. It's more likely to be used in the treatment of waste water.

IFAIR sulphate reducing bacteria live in oxygen poor environments (which is why they reduce sulphate rather than using oxygen), and a common by-product is poisonous hydrogen sulphide. This isn't too pleasant in your drinking water, but is less of a problem when treating waste water.

Bacteria and their fragile existance

[Mad Hughagi]

I guess the point to make here is that you would have to implement a two-stage filtration system that firstly utilised the bacteria to filter out their portion of nasties and then to follow it up with a chlorination process to get rid of the usual bio-contaminants. You probably wouldn't want to do it in the other direction!

Another thing I was wondering is the relative stability of the bacteria in a mutational sense. Probably an unfounded concern, but it never pays to look into these things before hand. Then again if you implemented a chemical treatment after the bacteria treatment I guess it wouldn't matter.

Pretty neat solution, now we just need to find a bacteria that can eat all our trash, clean our air, decrease greenhouse emissions and restore the ozone layer.

To heck with drinking water, mining is the ticket.

[human bean]

Did anybody notice the ratio of concentration?

Consider this:
Find a heavy-metals rich undercurrent in the ocean, pump into tanks, run through bacteria farm, release back to sea. Use bacteria as ore for slightly modified conventional refining process.

Granted, you couldn't extract gold this way, as most of its existence in seawater is in the form of chloride, but there are a number of metals (silver, lead, uranium, thorium come to mind) that would be amenable.

Alternatively, locate sulphate-based ore bodies by ecologically benign means, drill holes into same, explosive fragment, and then pump bacteria-laden soup down hole and back out for extraction. I'll take a few well housings hidden in the trees over a strip-mine any day.

Latin was not your best subject

[k8ek8e]

"...viruses are the bugs, bacterias are not, but I couldn't think of another joke)."
Bacterium - singular Bacteria - plural
Next disk crash please don't ask "Where did all my datas go?"

Re:To heck with drinking water, mining is the tick

[human bean]

Such currents are well documented, especially in arctic regions. I am told changes in salinity and mineral content can vary greatly by depth in any one place. As to the cause, good question.

Even without such a current, though, the metals content of seawater, plus its availability and ease of handling have had engineers trying to work out extraction methods for some time.