Applied bacteriology: Use of bacteria in industry
Written by Dr. T. M. Wassenaar Tuesday, 06 January 2009 07:29
Bacteria can be used to mine gold! well, not quite, but the discovery that Thiobacillus ferrooxidans can concentrate gold trapped in rock minerals drew the attention of mining companies, and they are now developing a method of applying these bacteria in the gold mining industry. Biomining may be the way of mining in the future, and researchers are now trying to modify the bacteria so that they collect the ores of interest.
Certain bacteria are used to clean our waste: be it pollution, compost heaps, or sewage: bacteria can get rid of things. The subject may not appeal to you, but there are microbes that clean sewage - and generate electricity at the same time! Or let them clean up metal waste, and serve as catalysts later on, to assist in chemical processes. Bacteria have a taste for mining wastewaters no matter how toxic the contaminants are for animals and humans. Specialized bacteria metabolize these toxic chemicals into non-toxic, or less toxic compounds.
Here are more examples of how diverse our use of bacteria is:
- Bacteria can degrade herbicides.Also pesticides can be degraded by bacteria and thus can groundwater that is contaminated be cleaned.
- How can ammonia, a component of dung and fertilizer, be benificial to plants? Only when nitrifying bacteria convert it to nitrite, and others change that to nitrate, which is a component that plants can use directly.The Nitrogen Cycle is explained here.
- Bacteria eat oil and a whole range of organic chemicals, like gasoline, diesel, benzene, toluene, acetone, and even PCB's. Most of these are toxic to humans and higher organisms, can they be degraded into safe compounds by bacteria. This application of bacteria is called bioremediation. More about biomediation: using bacteria to clean up hazardous waste.
- An even more spectacular property is that some bacterial species might be used for cleaning up our nuclear waste. The radioactivity cannot be destroyed by the bacteria, but they can 'eat' all chemical toxic solvents in which these radioactive wastes are often present, and thus slow down or prevent corrosion.
- Did you know? Bacteria can make plastic! And yet other bacteria can eat plastic, a discovery made by a 16-year young scientist.
Some bacteria are currently investigated for their power to manipulate mosquito's - and in that way we could fight malaria with bacteria. In fact, the ways how bacteria can be applied are nearly as diverse as their life styles.
But even those bacteria for which we haven't found an application, have a role to play in their own environment. Bacteria are essential components in the biospere of our planet.
Last Updated on Friday, 04 November 2011 15:14