Discovered in the mud of the Potomac River, a microbe called Geobacter has been quietly showing off its unique electrical properties for a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts for the past 20 years. The researchers, lead by microbiologist Derek Lovley, are developing ways to harness Geobacter for … [continued]
Just in time for the final installment of the Twilight vampire saga, a team of researchers from the University of Delhi is developing a filter made of garlic and onion, to clean up arsenic, cadmium, iron, lead, mercury, and tin. The process could be used to treat industrial effluent at factories, and … [continued]
In a twist on the old set a thief to catch a thief ploy, researchers at Michigan Technological University have found that a copper-loving bacteria can help corn suck copper contamination out of soil. The discovery could help clean up highly contaminated abandoned mining sites that have resisted other forms of “green” remediation.
One of the busiest border crossings in the U.S. will soon welcome visitors with a stroll through a new wastewater treatment plant. That sounds a bit, well, unfriendly, but there’s a twist. The “treatment plant” will be disguised as a beautifully landscaped, man-made wetland environment that purifies wastewater through natural … [continued]
Teams of researchers in Venezuela and Argentina are on the verge of elevating the lowly earthworm to rockstar status when it comes to cleaning up hazardous materials. They are studying the ability of earthworms to remediate soil containing lead, mercury, and other contaminants, and so far the worms seem to … [continued]
Scientists at the University of Utah have developed a new bubble-based technique for cleaning up polluted soil, especially soil contaminated with metals. The new technique may also work on polluted water. Testing is under way at a site at Lake Taihu in China, which takes in polluted runoff from a … [continued]
In honor of Blog Action Day on the topic of water, here is a bit of good news about a new low-cost, energy efficient method for purifying drinking water without the use of chlorine. Scientists at Stanford University have developed a new kind of water filter that uses a combination … [continued]
A forty acre, six megawatt solar power plant is providing the energy to run a water treatment operation at a Superfund site in California, and the U.S. EPA is so pleased with the results that they’ve produced a detailed case study to help promote similar projects across the country. [social_buttons] … [continued]
It’s a sustainable cure for the industrial hangover: take those old abandoned factories, former mines and dump sites, and use them as sites for solar, wind, hydropower, and other clean energy. The EPA has powered up a formerly patchwork reclamation effort into a program called Re-Powering America’s Lands that is … [continued]
A scientist at the Florida Institute of Technology has come up with a new compound that disinfects and cleans polluted water without producing toxic byproducts. It’s based on ferrate, which is a revved-up form of iron. Through the school’s technology transfer office, chemistry professor Virender K. Sharma has teamed up … [continued]
