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Beer and Bacteria to be used in Toxin Cleanup
GospelHead821 writes "According to this article in Popular Science, a chemistry student at the University of Tulsa is driving research into use of toxin-munching "sulfate-reducing bacteria" (SRBs) to help cleanup toxic, solid effluent from abandoned zinc and lead mines near her home. Where does the beer come in? Apparently, it has proved an excellent food source for the bacteria and helps to extend the lifespan of the normally short-lived SRBs by several months. Currently, the procedure is in the testing phase, with models being employed to simulate the conditions that would be present in a large-scale detoxification plant, which in turn, is based on the natural wetlands from which these bacteria hail."
Yeah, they're using this in the dump by my house. Nice!
Are you telling me these bacteria are getting free beer?
Goddamnit that's just not right.
Sounds like the Spirit cooled computers from a few years back!
:)
Alcohol sure does work wonders
If I remember correctly, they did a kind of similar thing when the Exxon Valdez oil ship crashed... I think there was some bacteria that had been engineered to live off oil, and so they dropped some bacteria on the oil and that cleaned up much of it. This is from my freshman biology class, so I'm not quite sure if it's accurate.
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
Somebody finally found a fitting use for Budweiser, Coors, Miller, et al!
I'm sure those little SRBs will go better and be less hung over if they're given some decent beer instead of some swill like Miluakee's Beast.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
And it runs on beer? You'll also have to build a second detox facility for the workers...
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
will this technology be free as in speech, or free as in beer?
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- A.E.
Finally. As interesting as all the studies about caffeine are, it is refreshing to read one about my other vice. So it is only good for bacteria. At least it is good for something.
I really like the last sentence. Serving beer to bacteria. Could have sworn it was talking about me and my friends!
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Dr. Kolynsqwerky: What is this bottle of beer doing here?
Student: It's... hmmm... an excellent food source for the bacteria and helps to extend the lifespan of the normally short-lived SRBs by several months, Dr.!
This space left intentionally blank.
Researcher A: "How do we clean up this toxic waste..."
Researcher B: "My group has had successful studies using this bacteria. The only problem is that it dies out too quickly."
Researcher A: "Well, how do we keep it alive long enough to do any good..."
Researcher Delta: "BREWSKIS!!!!!!!! WOOOOO HOOOO!"
This sounds familiar...
old article:
night_flyer writes: "Stale Beer may be used to clean up one of the worst superfund sites in the U.S. ... Now the question is, who leaves beer in the fridge long enough to go stale?" The site in question is a former zinc mine in Oklahoma which is full of toxic leavings, and has been on the EPA's Superfund hotlist for a few decades. A University of Tulsa professor named Tom Harris, who originally considered mollasses, is quoted as saying that "a wetlands treated with beer would be more effective in removing zinc and lead from runoff water than an untreated wetlands."
It's the same guy, the same research, but just a different application!
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
You know, this gives a whole new meaning to "microbrew".
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Finally, I know what to tell my friends when they ask me why I drink *so much* beer...
"I'm just doin' it to remove the extra zinc and lead from my body, guys!"...Yeah right!
well this is the first time I have heard of Beer helping to clean up a toxic mess. Best I can remember from my fraternity days it seemed to be the cause of many toxic messes.
(sorry I think that was obligatory)
http://monkeyserver.com --- weeeeee
So, with enough beer, they can get some schmoe off the streets real drunk and talk him into cleaning up toxic sludge? beer works wonders. Now, where does the bacteria fit in.....
This is coming from the guy who was too lazy to actually read the article.
And you can only guess how the beer was originally introduced into the mix...
Researcher A: Man! Another failure... what are we doing wrong?
Researcher B: I don't know... here... let's have a beer before we take off...
*sprrrt* of opening the can...
Researcher B: Hey! Watch where you're spraying it!
The rest is history.
$0.02 (CDN)
. Funding. Nice. First Pot helps with glaucoma, then beer is good for the environment. What's next, qualudes to beef up your firewall?
You are not the customer.
76th fp!
Fuck Ajit Pai
Get em drunk and set them loose. Poor little things. They are going to have a hell of a hangover when they are finished with all that dirty work.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
it has proved an excellent food source ... and helps to extend the lifespan...
Mmmm.... beer.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Intoxicated bacteria help remove toxins!
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Some use (and justification!) for all those homebrew experiments that somehow ended tasting like ********
In Murphy We Turst
This isn't original, save feeding the bugs with beer.
We used Desulfovibrio desulfuricans to treat water in the Everglades with high mercury levels.
Modified Pseudomonas aeruginosa have been used for years to clean up oil spills from the hard to get places. Like in between rocks and underneath sand.
Microbes: they're not just for diseases anymore.
Talisman
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
(Yeah, I'm back. Maybe.)
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
They're essentially going to pour beer into the wild.
I'm sorry, but that's a pretty high price to pay to save the planet. I mean, what if we run out?
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Reuters -- Kemps announced today that it will be adding Yo-Beer to it's line of Yo-J branded drinks. The state of Oklahoma has agreed to purchase 76 million gallons of Yo-Beer to help clean up the state. Kemps stock has risen 23% on the news. However, the Oklahoma state legislature withdrew their offer after realizing that their entire trailer park population is basically walking bags of beer and bacteria, and they are already paying millions of dollars to keep them around in the form of welfare and unemployment checks. Kemps stock fell to 10% below market open.
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What do you know, it sounds like beer may be good for me after all. Time to start drinking more!
...It's rather unpleasantly like being drunk.
Ford:
Arthur: Whats so unpleasant about being drunk?
Ford: Ask a glass of water.
--Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Hockey - Canada's gift to the world
Stale Beer to Clean Up Contamination?
Posted by timothy on Monday July 30, @12:23PM
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I just get my hands on some of these here SRB's and bam!
instant hangover cure!
That has GOTTA be better than drinking raw eggs with tabasco.
same idea (for over 2000 years now), for humans.
I was wondering if the type of beer had any effects, and if wine was being tested for the higher class microbes?
Do bacteria like Guiness more than Coors, how about the "silver bullet"? I wonder if Polygamy Porter(Of Wasatch Beers) causes increased reproduction?
"We drink our share and sell the rest."
...was a lot cleaner than I thought! There was a lot of beer and bacteria in there.
.
-pyrrho
I hear some posters expressing concern that bacteria is getting all this free beer. As far as I'm concerned - better the bacteria than me. Let me explain...
Look at it this way - it's not all bad. I'm sure they'll be using cheap American domestic beer (yuck! yellow water!).
At least they won't be using imported Canadian, Mexican, or (mmm!) German, etc beers. Now THAT would be tragic!
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
I sure hope they're being careful.
While this bioremediation technology looks real cool at first glance, and creates lots of beer jokes, I can see one potential flaw with it, unless I'm missing something. The flaw is that all that toxic lead and zinc have to go somewhere, even if the bacteria chew it up and remediate the soil. So where are the heavy metals going?
My guess is that they are taken up by the bacteria and somehow locked into a protein structure, putting the metal in the bacteria cell and not in the ground. Okay fine, you've gotten the toxic metal out of the ground and into the bacteria, but now what? If the bacteria are just left in the soil, they'll eventually decay and rather than having large chunks of zinc and lead laying around, you'll have atomisically dispersed metal all over the place.
I wish the popular science article had been more specific or verbose in how the whole thing would be engineered. My guess is that they'll have to somehow separate the soil from the bacterial colonies and burn the colony to collect the pure metal. The metal can then be recycled or stored safely. Separating the soil from the bacteria though is going to be very difficult.
I remember a similar technology that used plants to remove mercury from contaminated water streams rather than using bacteria. The scientists took a swamp plant that naturally had an affinity for mercury ions, and selectively bred/genetically engineered the plants to have even more affinity for the toxic mercury ions. The plants roots when then dangle in the waste streams, removing the ions and moving it to the leaves (natural defense mechanism as it turns out - animals and some bugs don't want to eat mercury-toxic leaves). After awhile the plants could be "harvested" and burned, where the mercury metal could then be collected, distilled, and recycled.
Given the sucess of the above approach (its now used by several companies that sometimes have mercury metal in their chemical waste streams) I'm surprised that a similar approach isn't used here.
If any of you out there know how this whole process works, or where these metals are going, please let me know via this forum, I'm very interested in finding out.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
That alone deserves a Nobel prize, for
well, something..
Isnt penicilin(sp) some sort of bacteria (or related)? Does this mean the doctor will give me a case of beer with my medicine to extend the life of the medicine? Or would the beer make it die faster, and make it less efficient?
Can all fish swim?
Beer. The cause of ... and solution to all of lifes problems" - Homer Simpson
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Think about it, instead of having to pay to dispose of failed batches of beer or raw materials that didn't quite pass QC, the brewing companies can sell their waste and minimize or even mitigate their losses. This reminds me of how in the early days of the steel industry, the byproduct of steel production, ethylene glycol, was often dumped in local rivers. Once the usefull properties of this substance were revealed, a former waste product became a valuable commodity. Maybe one day this kind of recycling will be the norm rather than the exception. But for now, citizens of industrialized countries, and especially America, seem content to throw away wealth in the form of unrealized potential of used goods and byproducts, or outright burn it by spewing it out the exhaust of grossly inefficient SUVs. We have a long way to go towards a sustainable, green economy that delivers on the promises of modern living, but these new innovations in recycling and pollution cleanup are a step in the right direction.
Will it work on the bad jokes submitted as responses to this article?
(Like this one?)
leetle tiny dead homiez.
Do a google search before posting.
... An appropriate use for American beer.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
So it seems that if you have been eating solid effluent (commonly known as "shit") all your life, then by drinking beer you can live longer... eeexcellent
"I feel so cold, on hookers and gin... this mess we're in"
Sorry, I may be mistaken for thinking this, but, that was kinda lame...
"I feel so cold, on hookers and gin... this mess we're in"
Any homebrewer worth his salt knows that this is bogus because beer, being made from the four and only four ingredients: Water, Malt, Hops and Yeast (no freakin rice or wheat, thank you), will NOT sustain a bacterial culture. Why? Because the hops, adding bitterness, also make the Ph inhospitable to pathogens.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Beer: is there anything it can't do?
-Valiss
In municipal wastewater treatment, methanol or ethanol is often used to provide food for the bacteria used to remove phosphates & nitrates. All you really need is a cheap source of carbon. (Of course, using beer gives brownie points for PR)
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
"Budweiser: it's not just for killing slugs anymore!"
FUCK THAT!
The sound of a billion bacteria shouting WAAAAAAAAAAAZZZZAAAAAAAAP!
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
I seem to remember years ago that one way used to collect heavy metals from contaminated land was to plant potatoes. These drew them out of the land, and then the spuds were harvested and disposed of. If anybody can corroborate that I'd be grateful.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town