From Michigan State University
Microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Researchers at Michigan State University have unraveled the mystery of how microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste and other toxic metals.
Details of the process, which can be improved and patented, are published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The implications could eventually benefit sites forever changed by nuclear contamination, said Gemma Reguera, MSU microbiologist.
“Geobacter bacteria are tiny micro-organisms that can play a major role in cleaning up polluted sites around the world,” said Reguera, who is an MSU AgBioResearch scientist. “Uranium contamination can be produced at any step in the production of nuclear fuel, and this process safely prevents its mobility and the hazard for exposure.”
The ability of Geobacter to immobilize uranium has been well documented. However, identifying the Geobacters’ conductive pili or nanowires as doing the yeoman’s share of the work is a new revelation. Nanowires, hair-like appendages found on the outside of Geobacters, are the managers of electrical activity during a cleanup.
“Our findings clearly identify nanowires as being the primary catalyst for uranium reduction,” Reguera said. “They are essentially performing nature’s version of electroplating with uranium, effectively immobilizing the radioactive material and preventing it from leaching into groundwater.”
The nanowires also shield Geobacter and allow the bacteria to thrive in a toxic environment, she added.
Their effectiveness was proven during a cleanup in a uranium mill tailings site in Rifle, Colo. Researchers injected acetate into contaminated groundwater. Since this is Geobacters’ preferred food, it stimulated the growth of the Geobacter community already in the soil, which in turn, worked to remove the uranium, Reguera said.
Reguera and her team of researchers were able to genetically engineer a Geobacter strain with enhanced nanowire production. The modified version improved the efficiency of the bacteria’s ability to immobilize uranium proportionally to the number of nanowires while subsequently improving its viability as a catalytic cell.
Reguera has filed patents to build on her research, which could lead to the development of microbial fuel cells capable of generating electricity while cleaning up after environmental disasters.
The research team included Dena Cologgi and Allison Speers, MSU graduate students, and Sanela Lampa-Pastirk and Shelly Kelly, post-doctoral researchers. The National Institute of Environmental Health Science and the U.S. Department of Energy funded the study.
Bacteria which produce electricity. Does it qualify as a biofuel, or is that only for when we convert food crops into fuel?
Now we need a way to extract the bacteria and reprocess the concentrated Uranium for fuel use.
This could then be a novel method of metal mining and initial ore separation processing. If different strains of the bacters could be “tuned” to different elements like gold or iron or copper… then specific bacters could be injected into holes in the ground where known metal deposits reside, allowed to attract the metal of interest then extract the bacters and remove the concentrated metals. They could even do part of the refining process since the bacters are selecting out the metal an atom at a time, thus removing the other impurities. Separating the metal from the bacters’ biological material could prove to be the environmental sticking point as it would likely involve some of the same processes that environmentalist already are upset with the gold and silver refining industry over.
I hope they figure this out. It could avert disasters like occurred in the Chilean Copper Mine last year. Send the bacteria down the hole and you won’t need to worry about the tunnels collapsing.
“How is it that a researcher, doing work on the public dime, can patent her results? Aren’t her results the property of the public? Well, they should be.”
Depending on who funded it, she’ll be the “inventor” but the funding agency will be the patent holder. In many cases, the funding agency (DOD, NIH,…), the University and the scientist will split any proceeds, with the funding agency getting the biggest slice, the University the next biggest slice and the scientist a small slice.
It sounds like the bacteria “electroplate” the water soluable oxides, chlorides etc… and produce metallic Uranium that won’t leech into the water table. It doesn’t remove the Uranium, it just changes it to the more stable metallic form. It shouldn’t affect the radiation (or radon) production I assume.
It’s not really ‘cleaning up’ the Uranium, it is preventing it from dissapating. For low level sources, this seems worse than letting the Uranium oxides dissapate and become less concentrated. For high level waste, it makes sence.
If you harvest the electricity, the electroplating process would stop and the wastes would not be stabilized. Also, there is no such thing as free energy, where does the energy come from to generate the electricity? Not likely in the process of converting Uranium compounds into metallic Uranium.
I don’t know, this sounds like a free energy scam.
Wait a minute. Wasn’t this a plot to an early 60’s Japanese Monster movie?
Scott;
Your technical knowledge is as spotty as your spelling. “Fixing” the U is extremely helpful, and makes recovery easy.
And :
leach
dissipating
sense
The energy comes from metabolizing (e.g.) acetate, as specified. Look up “reduction” and “oxidation” for a clue.
this is good work on a real world problem … even if it never reaches a commercial application it has value …
this was and is money much better spent than any funds used for “AGW climate research” …
most of the tonnage of radioactive waste is supposedly hot, coveralls, hot clothes lockers, low level radioactive water……
i can see bacteria eating up organic based stuff but how is it going to swallow a glowing crescent wrench without getting heart burn.
remember the nukehandlers pledge: If it glows in the dark, don’t f^&* with it.
C
My thought too, Crito.
They eat the uranium. The radioactivity makes them mutate and grow to monstrous size, and then they ravage Tokyo and kill millions by blasting electricity at them. Prof Tanaka’s beautiful daughter survives, though her clothes are in shreds.
The process of rendering radioactive contamination immobile is called fixing. Fixed contamination is not easily removable.
Uranium contamination (natural uranium, that is), however, isn’t highly radioactive, it’s more chemically toxic (heavy metal toxicity) than radioactively toxic. We really don’t have much escaped-into-the-wild transuranic (plutonium, neptunium, americium, curium, etc…) contamination to worry about (unless those tank farms at Hanford and Savannah River break down before they are cleaned up).
It’s “Rock-Fuel”
And everyone said the Stone Age was so yesterday and evil. LOL
I welcome the gods bearing energy bearing rocks