Green Options » bioremediation

Human Health Endangered by Australian Drought

Susan Kraemer — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:31:24 +0000

Due to climate change; one of the now dried up lakes in Australia is gradually turning into Sulphuric Acid.

The Age is reporting that there are fears people living in towns around the lakes may suffer from acid dust, blowing off the bare lakes as rising acidity threatens to wipe out ecology in the lakes. The lake-bed soils turn into sulphuric acid when exposed to the air, and record low flows down the Murray are exposing the beds.

Chicken Poop Cleans Up Crude Oil in Soil

Derek Markham — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:01:45 +0000

Researchers at Wuhan University in China discovered that adding chicken manure to soil contaminated with crude oil triggered degradation of 75% of the oil within two weeks.

“The use of chicken manure to stimulate crude oil biodegradation in the soil could be one of the several sought-after environmentally friendly ways of abating petroleum hydrocarbon pollution in the natural ecosystem.”

Gas 2.0 Monthly Recap: March 2008

Clayton B. Cornell — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:12:34 +0000

This has been a great month for Gas 2.0, and in no small way due to the incredible stories we’re hearing every day about new green-car tech, non-food based biofuels, and big scientific breakthroughs.

Besides getting back into the swing of things after some down-time in February, we were lucky to add Benjamin F.T. Jones to our writing team. Ben’s covered some of the most popular stories here this month, including the Subaru’s STI diesel, the all-electric Lightning GT, and a Japanese man’s attempt to sail across the Pacific in a wave-powered boat. See all of Ben’s posts here.

If you don’t want to miss the news next month, you can subscribe to Gas 2.0’s RSS feed here.

To recap, these are some of the top stories from March 2008:

Top 15 Unexpected Uses For Biodiesel

Clayton B. Cornell — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:57:54 +0000

While virtually everyone is familiar with the use of biodiesel as a substitute for diesel fuel, there are a few novel uses that may not have crossed your radar. Biodiesel can produce hydrogen, clean up oil spills, degrease your tools, heat your home, and more.

Here’s My Top 15 Unexpected Uses for Biodiesel:

1. Producing Hydrogen for Fuel-Cell Vehicles

This was the big story of the month: Researchers at InnovaTek have developed hand-sized microreactors that can turn biodiesel (or any other liquid fuel) into a hydrogen stream for use in an adjoining fuel-cell. Chevron has already invested $500,000 to develop hydrogen refueling stations for fuel-cell powered cars. InnovaTek hopes to eventually install the microreactors in vehicles, which would allow cars to fill up on biodiesel but be powered by a much more efficient and even cleaner-burning electric drivetrain. See the full story here.

Turning Brownfields Into Biofuels

Clayton B. Cornell — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:25:27 +0000

What if you could use plants to turn industrial waste sites into fertile, productive cropland? Better yet, what if you could produce biofuels in the process? By marrying bio-remediation and crop production, a group of Carnegie Mellon University graduates hopes to do just that: produce biodiesel and ethanol on reclaimed land.

"It’s a proven technology, but in an unproven environment," said Mr. Butcher, 27. "The idea of growing energy crops is not necessarily a new one; the idea of growing them on distributed sites on vacant land, in an urban context, is kind of a new idea."

Kind of. It’s happening elsewhere, in dribs and drabs. Monroeville’s Cardinal Resources plants poplar trees, which suck up toxic waste, at manufacturing sites around the country, but doesn’t convert those plants into fuels. In Los Angeles, a design team funded by the Annenberg Foundation has turned a 32-acre rail yard into a massive cornfield and garden. But that project, dubbed "Not a Cornfield," is more urban artwork than laboratory. The closest parallel can be found in Michigan, where Michigan State University researchers are turning a 2-acre dump site into land for biodiesel and ethanol crops.

Using plants, enzymes, fungi, or microorganisms to depollute contaminated areas isn’t an entirely novel concept. Phytoremediation - using plants to clean up the soil - has been practiced for centuries. Due to general increases in industrial pollution and the sheer potential of the idea, using naturally and (more recently) genetically-engineered organisms to ameliorate pollution has gained special emphasis in the last 20 years.

The CMU group is taking the next logical step in bioremediation by attempting to create a usable byproduct, in this case fuel:

GTECH [Growth Through Energy and Community Health], a nonprofit that sprang out of a master’s thesis, is hoping to bring all of the divergent threads together, stitching a strategy that will cleanse contaminated industrial land, occupy vacant urban plots and produce renewable fuels, the last of which happens to be one of the hot political topics du jour.

Test crops already have been planted. At the former LTV Steel site in Hazelwood, the GTECH crew has taken over six barren acres of fill and planted hybrid poplar trees, switchgrass and sunflowers. The first two can be reduced into cellulosic ethanol — that is, ethanol that isn’t corn- or grain-based — while sunflowers become conventional biodiesel.

Testing several types of crops is important, since each plant removes different contaminants. For example, ragweed and poplar trees sequester lead. Barley and sugar beets excel at removing salt and have commonly been used to desalinate agricultural land. Naturally occurring bacteria can be harnessed to assist in cleaning up oil spills. And sunflowers are apparently well-suited to remove arsenic and uranium from soils - just in case you had a chemical explosion or a nuclear meltdown.

It’s also important to find crops with properties conducive to making biofuels. Growing ethanol- or biodiesel-producing crops on contaminated land bypasses the food vs. fuel issue and could make more land available for cultivation.

But it isn’t clear that any of these crops will actually work for the intended purpose, especially on really polluted sites. Will it take a succession of several different crops or polyculture to fully remediate the soil? Will the plants even grow under such poor conditions? And more importantly for the project, will the biofuels meet ASTM fuel standards, considering the contaminant load they could contain?

"We’re not growing on even farmland, which is hard enough to grow on," said Ms. Koch, 33. "We’re growing on vacant properties, which are usually demolished houses that have brick and glass and cement and rebar and all kinds of terrible things. [Crop] quality is going to be a concern," especially in the first years. It’s a concern at Michigan State, too. Will the end product meet industry standards — and, should they come to pass, federal standards — for what makes usable biofuel?

Time will tell. In any case, it’s a great idea, and the group deserves a nod:

"You’re going to see a lot more land, whether it’s a brownfield or otherwise, get utilized for crops like that. I wouldn’t be surprised to someday see all the highway grass be switchgrass instead," he said. Rather than paying PennDOT workers to mow grass along the sides of highways, farmers or biofuel companies might bid for the rights to harvest the switchgrass, which sprouts perennially and grows well in poor soil and cooler climates.

CMU grads want to use blighted industrial, residential sites to produce bio-fuel crops. July 10, 2007. Post-Gazette.
Wikipedia: Phytoremediation
Wikipedia: Bioremediation

Photo Credit: Post-Gazette