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New Bacterium Could Herald Bio-Batteries
Clever Pun writes "According to this BBC article, a newly discovered bacterium is able to convert 'uranium and other radionuclides dissolved in water to solid compounds that can be extracted.' It reduces (adds electrons to) positively charged metal ions, making them insoluble in water (making them easier to clean up), which creates small charges of electricity. It has been speculated that this bacterium could potentially be used in a sort of bio-battery. Matrix v0.1b, anyone?"
Matrix v0.1b, anyone?
If this is the beta, what was the alpha?
This was covered on NPR this past Friday. You can probally find some archive of it if you're interested in hearing it.. try here. It sounded interesting but not quite viable yet based on what I heard.
This sugar eating bacteria battery looks more promising. Runs on sugar and has an 80% conversion efficiency.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
about directly producing electricity when you could probably extract uranium straight from sea water with the help of these babies? Probably even cheaper than buying it from third world countries in the long run.
Not saying evolution didnt happen, but someone explain how an organism like this bacterium could evolve due to "survival of the fittest?"
It seems quite impossible to understand how a bacterium could have mutations that allow it to "convert 'uranium and other radionuclides dissolved in water to solid compounds that can be extracted.' It reduces (adds electrons to) positively charged metal ions, making them insoluble in water (making them easier to clean up), which creates small charges of electricity."
-Vib, videogame freelancer for news0r.com, videogame.net, and vnorby.tk
What I want to see is a machine that operates
carbon + electricty -> food
in less labor and land area per calorie than farming plants.
No one would want to eat it now, especially not the organic farming fans (mmm... organic parasites, yum!), but don't forget we're multiplying exponentially still, and you can only pile on so much fertilizer.
For great justice.
Quite a lot of information about this bacteria (Geobacter sulfurreducens) can be found at the Geobacter project home page.
Human/Ranger/Zangband
That phrase will have new meaning...
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
Call me a troll, but I think it's sad that this is going to spark a lot of "Bio-battery" VC money. It may just be me, but I think we should be investing in figuring out how this stuff works, so we can do it on our own without the bacteria, rather than trying to exploit this bacteria in ways that will definitely result in a living creature being put in an environment it wasn't intended for, with the possibility of mutation to adapt to that environment.
add electrons to the heavy metal ions to newtralize them
*record scraaaaatch*
"newtralize"?
oh, man. that's a new low.
The page linking to the NPR audio is here
Forget Neodarwinism: it's a myth, and dead wrong. Biological evolution does not happen that way. In short: autonomous systems cannot be instructed by the environment, so there can be no such thing as Natural Selection. The reason Neodarwinism (which is not the same as evolution!) is still the dominant paradigm are really very very close to the reason Micro$oft dominates the computer market. FUD included: I'm supposed to be a "cryptocreationist" because I demand this so-called "theory" to be put to the test [it never was, go check it].
Evolutionary biology (the non-Micro$oft-like kind, that is) has long left Darwin behind, decades ago.
Sorry this Science Inc. had you fooled.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
I heard about this first on Science Friday on the December 12th show. When I heard them mention the bacteria making electricity I though of the "Proto-Culture" from Robotech. When I was a kid I used to think it was an electricity producing life-form that they found on the SDF-1 ... of course my memories are mostly of Robotech season three... "Genesis Climber Mospeada"
It would be hilarious if science fact would follow this particular fiction and lead to...
<Announcer Voice>
"the awesome power of RoboTech!"
</Announcer Voice>
[signature]
I have my doubts that this sort of bio-battery will ever be useful on a widespread, large scale.
Even anaerobic resiration by the most efficient organisms yields under 50% of the potential energy in their food. Secondary reactions like this typically occur at a much slower rate than life-sustaining reactions. What this means is that a fairly high amount of nutrients will have to be supplied, and that the resulting current generated will be relatively small compared to the potential energy sent in.
I guess what I'm saying here is "don't expect a miracle bio-powered car from this."
These bacteria will no doubt be useful in cleanup of contaminated sites, though. Perhaps soil could be placed into large decontamination devices, and the resulting electricity could be used for low-output pumps that drip nutrients into the chamber. Then you'd have a useful, self-powered detox device.
environment it wasn't intended for
If someone hooks you up with a life's supply of food in exchange for taking your crap what would you do?
I'd say the bacteria would be happy being in a battery.. They get to feed and we get our volts. It's a win-win situation!
Organisms that reduce other metals have been known for a long time - for example mercury. There are already programs using these sorts of bioorganisms for detoxifying heavy metal-containing soil and water.
Their bacteria Shenwala alga, reduces the iron from Fe(III) to Fe(II) ( uses the iron as oxygen in it's metabolism ) . Other bacteria ( Desulfovibrio Ferrireducens ( sp ) ) have shown to reduce uranium from U(VI) to the less soluable U(IV) and have been used to clean up mine tailing drainage by making all the uranium insoluable.
Since any chemical reaction that is not allowed to go to completion causes isotopic enrichment ( presumably the lighter isotope is the preferred reactant ) and metabolism by bacteria is really just a chemical reaction there is some enrichment there.
Other bacteria which oxidize iron like Thiobacillus Ferrooxidans have been used to leach uranium out of ores by oxidizing it to a soluable state.
Since any chemical reaction not completed results in some isotopic enrichment one might enrich U235 by, feeding the dissolved Uranium oxide produced by Thiobacillus Ferrooxidans from raw ore to the anaerobic Desulfovibrio ferrireducens where it would reprecipitate. Then feed the precipitated uranium oxide back to thiobacillus ferrooxidans to produce more uranium liquor to feed to desulfovibrio ferrireducens forming cascaded stages which would gradually enrich the U235 until it was useful for fuel rods etc.
The question is: how much energy does this take, and how efficient is the enrichment? How much sugar/light/whatever-these-bugs-eat do you need to feed them per stage and is it more economical energy-wise than other uranium enrichment methods already in use?
A home experimenter interested in developing this into a patentable process would be breaking the law by enriching uranium. After learning how to grow these beasties ( I'm sure they'd sell them to you since they are not dangerous ) you would have to measure the enrichment achieved bu sending a sample off to a mass spectometry lab. It would behove one to send the depleted uranium rather than the enriched uranium so as not to piss anyone off ( hope it wasn't the heavy isotope the bugs liked better! ). Then you could measure how much it costs you to feed the bacteria per kilo of metabolized uranium and compare it to the cost of existing enrichment methods by looking it up, and decide if you have something worth patenting. Profit.
Eat at Joe's.
>Probably even cheaper than buying it from third world countries in the long run.
Largest uranium exporter to the US market is Canada. Largest uranium deposit currently being mined in Olympic Dam in Australia. Doubt that either of these qualify as 3rd world since both provide free, modern health care to their citizens.
-AD
ps. IMAME (I am a mining engineer)
Dude
Eat at Joe's.
First: WHAT is a "population"? Do answer this if you can, don't just dodge the question. You must be able to define every term you use, like "species", "organism", &c. No cheating!
Do *you* realize that evolution applies to lineages, not to populations? If evolution is the change in ontogeny along a phylogeny---where does the population enters the picture? And you never mentioned generations, conditio sine qua non for evolution.
Good luck defining population, species, organism, &c.---you'll need it. If you can't, you might be interested in going where true science is going, leaving Science, Inc. for what I call "Versio2".
``L'imagination au povoir.''
I have only a couple of min:
:) ] Yes, Darwinism SHOULD be taught side by side with Creationism, but not as part of the science curriculum but under Comparative Mythology or Comparative Theology or some such.
>so how does Biology explain evolution?
molecular autopoiesis (=life) + reproduction = evolution
>but how does the environment not have an effect on the evolution of an organism?
1. There is no such thing as The Environment. Each organism has its own environment (i.e. the rest of the universe that does not take part in the autopoietical process under consideration), all environment are != (by def).
2. The effect of the environment on the organism is never and can never be instructional (what to do). The organism DOES WHATEVER IT PLEASES unless this is incompatible with its [org/env] relationship, in which case the org is not more (dies). So the only feedback is DEATH.
In fact, you can apply the Darwinian model to non-living system, you can---so Darwinism says---BIOlogical evolution *whithout* life! If it does not involve *life*, it's not biology, at best it's some other more general science like chemistry or physiscs. [Darwinism is not really science, since it cannot be put to a test; it's mythology]
Ergo, Darwinism is not even biology, and not even science. [Weird the truth, isn't it, yet the truth
Meanwhile, science, the real search for truth by experimentation, has left Science Inc. for something new, what I call Versio2. See you on the other side!
``L'imagination au povoir.''
lineage:: two or more molecular autopoietical systems (=organisms) conected by a (non-branching) line of descent (historical connection). Gets really interesting when you include metacellulars which (amost) invariable have gametic fusion, which gives you reticulation of lineages, but still you can follow lineages.
Where is the circle? Everything is defined, no cheating.
About the cats: oh golly, I know you can do that with bacteria, and you won't need kiloyears. Do you think I don't know about that? I had to describe and even invent that kind of experiment, in course after course on 'evolution'. So what? There is no doubt that evolution happens. The point is HOW does it happens, and WHY. By this mythical Natural Selection? *That*'s the point. I think you---as both the Darwinians and the Creationist foster---confuse Evolution with (Neo)Darwinism. (Neo)Darwinism in NOT the Theory of Evolution (which predates Darwin by millenia), but the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Now, EBNS has *never* been put to the test. Check the refs. (Hint: evidence in support of evolution does not count---we are not testing that, are we?).
About the vageness: in your experiment. First, you are NOT testing for EBNS. And you are cheating: how can you tell that "cats" and "rats" are one population each? How can you even tell that there is a species of each? WHAT is a species and a population?
About the ID whackos. I know all about them, as well as the Creation 'Scientists'. Not that much diff from the Cabal of the Neodarwinian 'Scientists'. They all have the same bases E.g. complexity cannot arise alone. ND says its caused by NS (how?). ID says it's aliens (halfway NS and God). CS says it was God. Biologists say its a system transition, an emergent from lineages of autopoietical systems self-organizing in non-reversible ways. This is *predicted* by theory, it's a consequence of reproducion. Now this last CAN be tested, on a computer for example, and *does* happen.
Same of intelligence in evolution. ND denies it, it's all random. ID says it's the aliens. CS says its God. All 3 agree that control cannot emerge from simple systems, it comes from outside or it's absent. Biologists say simple systems interacting CAN give rise to very complex behaviours (e.g. a brain!) so evolution MAY be intelligent, but if so there is not need for the intelligence to be external, and there is no requirment for the all-random evolution the ND insist on.
The list is long.
About the huge ammount of evidence. Sift throug it. Evidence? Yes, for Evolution. Tons of it. I have some myself. But NONE for the mythical NS. Give me the ref of ONE (1) falsation test for EBNS. That is, evolution by other means (H0) is REJECTED and we must accept the alternative (H1) evolution happened by Natural Selection. Name just ONE.
After you spend a couple of weeks and FAIL, please do think how this can be. No evidence whatsoever? None? For such a big macho branch of science. No evidence? Isn't this fishy? Does it not smell rotten? Is this SCIENCE at all? Or just "ivory-tower witch-doctoring", as Gibson put it?
After that, start reading some real biology.
``L'imagination au povoir.''