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Phytomining For Nickel
jvl001 writes "The Globe and Mail has an interesting article about Inco's attempts to extract nickel from a plant (alyssum) grown on nickel rich soil. Selective breeding and bacterial adjuncts are capable of producing a plant that once incinerated may produce ash with up to 30% nickel. Waste heat from the incineration process may be used for power generation. A neat way of making use of use of land otherwise unusable for agriculture. In this case unusable because of past Inco activity."
I realize the article says that some soil can provide many years of nickel mining, but will these extraordinarily tough plants help reclaim the land for agriculture? Once the plants have extracted all they can, I wonder if the toxicity levels will be low enough for food-producing plants to thrive once again.
Let's see... You've got to control air pollution from the burning. Plant-nutrient minerals in the ash probably need to be seperated from the nickel and returned to the soil. (Or is spreading mineral fertilizer cheaper...but where does what's left of the nickel-removed-from-it ash go?). A nickel plant that's running 24x7x365 on ore from a strip mine enjoys a certain economy over one that's usually idle & waiting for the fall harvest.
It would be nice if this worked in the real world, especially if such techniques could be extended to other minerals, pollutants, etc.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
Big plant in the back that does quarters too.
So my dad was wrong all along -- money DOES grow on trees!
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Disclaimer: I just read the article, so this is pure conjecture.
Since they're burning plants, the process is close to CO2-neutral. The plants take in CO2 as they grow which is re-emitted when they burn. When burned in a (presumably) oxygen-rich mining furnace, CO and NOx emissions are probably fairly low.
The entire point of the process is to recover ash and other particulates, so one would expect fairly tight control of those, too.
-boredman
This has been done before. I remember being in highschool in 1993 and doing a research paper on just this tech. Their were people such as those at Living Machines [http://www.livingmachines.com] that have been pulling various materials including heavy metals out of contaminated water and soil for years.
IIRC, alyssum can be grown in clay pellets, allowing it to be used to clean out water with nickle and other contaminates.
The real trick will be finding some one to put a comprehensive do it yourself program to allow people to do this at home in their backyard (or third world country)
I remember doing a project about phytoremediation last year, and I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread! A cheap, effective, and relatively environmentally friendly way of cleaning up after ourselves. And now, apparently economical too. Usually in phytoremediation they use plants that grow quickly (like hemp) so "waiting for the fall harvest" really isn't necessary. Besides, looks like they're genetically engineering the plants anyway, might as well turn up the growth factor too. I think phytoremediation is one of the emerging techs that will save us... it can extract many different kinds of heavy metals, INCLUDING radioactive metals, which is wonderful. My props go to Inco!