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?

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.