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."

Comments

Can this reclaim land?

[bsmoor01]

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.

This sounds cool, but...

[0x69]

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.