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."

Comments

Ok, hold up

[sllort]

Are you telling me these bacteria are getting free beer?

Goddamnit that's just not right.

If I remember correctly...

[gmplague]

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.

Re:If I remember correctly...

[caesar-auf-nihil]

You are correct, there are certain types of bacteria that have the right enzymes to break down hydrocarbons into units the bacteria can actually use as food/cell-building chemicals.

The only problem with them is that like almost all bacteria, they are UV sensitive, so they were most effective at night and under the oil slick. In the morning, most of the colonies would get wiped out by the sunlight.

These bacteria are slightly different in that they seem to be breaking down not hydrocarbon (oil) waste, but heavy metal waste. What I couldn't glean from the article was what the bacteria are doing with the waste once they injest it. Yes, they've broken it down, but you have to atomistic/matter conservation here, so the toxic zinc and other heavy metals have to go somewhere. Since beer is needed to feed the bacteria, they're obviously not using the heavy metals to generate more of themselves or create some special zinc-containing enzyme. My guess is that the bacteria break down the toxic form of the zinc/heavy metals and turn it into something easier for the environment to handle. However, I have no idea here what those bacteria are doing with it. I wish the popular science article had been more verbose in scientific content.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

[devphil]

with models being employed to simulate the conditions that would be present in a large-scale detoxification plant,

And it runs on beer? You'll also have to build a second detox facility for the workers...

Re:Sorry, I couldn't resist.

[suwain_2]

with models being employed

I fail to see where the models come in. The bacteria get beer and women?

I can see where the beer comes from...

[ralmeida]

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.!

Repost of another /.?

[lonesome phreak]

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!

Tiny little steins

[isomeme]

You know, this gives a whole new meaning to "microbrew".

Rename the story!

[uigrad_2000]

Intoxicated bacteria help remove toxins!

Everglades

[Talisman]

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

Don't worry

[JediTrainer]

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!

Where do the heavy metals go?

[caesar-auf-nihil]

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.