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Phytomining – Extracting Minerals via Plants
- Gaishan 3y agoAlso covered here; https://singularityhub.com/2024/03/28/these-plants-could-mine-crucial-battery-materials-from-the-soil-with-their-roots/ https://singularityhub.com/2024/03/28/these-plants-could-min...
- onthecanposting 3y agoI am ignorant about agricultural research budgets, but $10M does not seem like a very serious amount to prove the basic concept and, much more importantly, the viability of scaling an industrial process. This is interesting, but I am guessing this is perceived by the program managers as a total moonshot.
- ianai 3y agoThey remediate certain superfund sites with spinach leaves iirc. And I think it’s bacteria that make nutrients from inorganic sources available for the rest of us (ie rocks). As for budget, 10M seems pretty great for what reads as a “proof of concept” level effort. You can buy a farm for ~1M and 9M left over. (They won’t do that I imagine but just to illustrate.)
- onthecanposting 3y agoThe land would be the easy part. Hiring a PI, a team of subject matter experts on botany, metallurgy, and genetics, a few skilled lab technicians, a couple programmers or statisticians, an environmental compliance expert, and whoever else I forgot, probably costs more than $1M/yr and ideally there would be more than a single team. I have no idea what reagents and bespoke GMO plants cost, but it can't be cheap.
- kelseyfrog 3y agoEven when plants don't extract significant amounts of material, they can be useful in detecting sources. A paper about using synchrotron analyses to detect gold in eucalyptus comes to mind. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3614 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3614
- Esus 3y agoWhat even, thank you for sharing this, would have never stumbled on it organically. Just the title alone has me intrigued. > gold particles in Eucalyptus leaves and their relevance to exploration for buried gold deposits Would love any other recs like this.
- defrost 3y agoTermites strike gold: Ant and termite colonies unearth gold in Australia https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121211095007.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121211095007.h... ( Also used in parts of Africa)
- tmerse 3y agoAnd then there is nano bionic, explosives detecting spinach. https://news.mit.edu/2016/nanobionic-spinach-plants-detect-explosives-1031 https://news.mit.edu/2016/nanobionic-spinach-plants-detect-e...
- istjohn 3y agoPrimitive Technology made a crude knife from the iron in scum collected from a forest stream[0]. 0. https://youtu.be/dhW4XFGQB4o https://youtu.be/dhW4XFGQB4o
- tomcam 3y agoThat’s nearly miraculous, if true. I have no reason to disbelieve the guy, but wow, I had no idea there is so much iron available in the wild like that.
- aitchnyu 3y agoI used to collect magnetic ore from sand using magnets in childhood. If magnets were available in history, then a certain tribe didnt have to pimp their women to obtain iron nails from sailors who ripped them from the very ship they were supposed to maintain, or modern western countries didnt have to burn down barns to recover nails.
- papercrane 3y agoIron is widely distributed across the globe. Nearly all soil will have some iron in it. I'm actually in PEI right now to watch the eclipse, and the soil here is famous for it's red colour caused by the high iron-oxide content.
- tomcam 3y agoYes, I'm used to iron filings on the beach in So Cal, but somehow I didn't think it would be in such high amounts in bacteria.
- yesbut 3y agoI do this when I eat plants.
- eichin 3y agoHmm, what plants do they have in mind? (google -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperaccumulators_table_%E2%80%93_2_:_Nickel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperaccumulators_table_%E2%80... -> sort by accumulation rates) Turns out 29 of the top 30 are "oops, all Brassica" :-)
- peanutz454 3y agoShould I be worried that eating cabbage is exposing me to heavy metals? Edit: sorry that table is only for Nickel, but Brassica shows up against lead too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hyperaccumulators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hyperaccumulators
- frogulis 3y agoAnd specifically, Brassica oleracea shows up against lead, though no amount is given in that table. The referenced webpage [1] mentions 0.1% to 3% (!) of dry weight, though that's in relation to hyperaccumulators generally. This article [2] gives an indication of what high concentrations may look like in Brassica oleracea, though I still don't have much idea of what those numbers mean to a human being eating the plant. Considerably less than the 10,000+ mg/kg seen in other plants, thankfully. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110224034628/http://www.civil.northwestern.edu/ehe/html_kag/kimweb/MEOP/INDEX.HTM https://web.archive.org/web/20110224034628/http://www.civil.... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211715623002448 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221171562...
- genewitch 3y agoProbably but nearly all food exposes you to toxins. There's nicotine in French fries and ketchup, eggplants and cauliflower, for example. CDC 1993
- hhh 3y agoFries as a stimulant delivery mechanism? Sign me up.
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- dmbche 3y agoIsn't this absurd? At a glance, shouldn't it take acres and acres being cared for for months to, then some processing, to extract the same nickel as a mine in a day, maybe a week? Are the nickel mines dry? Anyone has a breakdown of the math? Edit1: "But while the idea is still at a nebulous stage, there is considerable potential. “In soil that contains roughly 5 percent nickel—that is pretty contaminated—you’re going to get an ash that’s about 25 to 50 percent nickel after you burn it down,” Dave McNear, a biogeochemist at the University of Kentucky, told Wired. “In comparison, where you mine it from the ground, from rock, that has about .02 percent nickel. So you are several orders of magnitude greater in enrichment, and it has far less impurities.”" From :https://singularityhub.com/2024/03/28/these-plants-could-mine-crucial-battery-materials-from-the-soil-with-their-roots/ https://singularityhub.com/2024/03/28/these-plants-could-min...
- vintermann 3y agoI know there's impressively little metal in most metal ores mined today. It's actually kind of amazing how comparatively cheap metals like copper are, considering they move and crush maybe 1000 or 10000 kgs of rock for every kg of metal (the mine waste isn't pleasant to think about either). I guess that in contaminated soil, waste ash ponds etc. the metal is in forms which are harder to extract or separate. Because from just weight ratio, it's hard to understand how rock is better.
- euroderf 3y ago> considering they move and crush maybe 1000 or 10000 kgs of rock for every kg of metal This is more or less what I visualize if I get weary of recycling bits of metal (bottle caps, aluminum foil, ...).
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoMaybe you can combine it with other production, make bio-diesel say?
- ametrau 3y agoIt would be cool to be able to get the diesel and the metal. The plants have stored calories in some form. There is a way to get energy from them.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 3y agoI wonder if you could apply some of the same tech or principles from algae based diesel to extract minerals from a slurry rather than slow growing macroscopic plants?
- ggm 3y agoAlso phytoremediation: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-04/documents/a_citizens_guide_to_phytoremediation.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-04/documents/a_...
- zkms 3y agoIf there are plants (there is a patent and a paper describing this in some algae, IDK if it has been replicated or not...) that have preferences (kinetic isotope effect!) for one isotope of uranium over the other you could technically have a uranium enrichment plant made from uranium enrichment...plants.
- exe34 3y agoHave a feeling this kind of idea is born secret
- WJW 3y agoIt's not like you can just buy some uranium to experiment with in your home lab, so even if a normie had this idea they would probably not be able to test it in any way.
- suoduandao3 3y agoI guess you missed it when everyone was leaving joke reviews on this product? https://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Uranium-Ore/product-reviews/B000796XXM https://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Uranium-Ore/product-reviews...
- weberer 3y agohttps://unitednuclear.com/uranium-ore-c-2_4/ https://unitednuclear.com/uranium-ore-c-2_4/
- kvgr 3y agoI mean, go to Jachymov, plant some plants... success
- kjkjadksj 3y agoTheres 4.5 billion tons of the stuff in seawater. Enough uranium to make 70 billion little boy bombs if my math is right, using an algae perhaps you’ve designed to accumulate uranium.
- Heronymus_Anon 3y agoThere was a story in a Donald Duck comic, i read as a kid, where Dagobert extracted Gold with the help of a "Gold Flower" in a piece of land, where the gold concentration was to low for manual mining. Always thought, and got reassured through a study a few years ago about plants that genetically adapted to otherwise toxic amounts of nickel in rainforest areas (linked on HN), that this could be a way to extract minerals in a future more slowed down and sustainable utopian society. Also really interesting are ways to detox soils through plants. Unfortunately, a local pioneer project for extracting industrial contamination, and than making biogas from the plants, was stopped, because it was just cost covering but not really creating monetary profit. A sad example of, how shortsighted the instant profit capitalism will act, if longterm effects are not integrated into the equation through regulations. But what to expect from a species that puts great effort into spreading cultivation of seedless wine grapes, just to realize that grapeseeds have live prolonging effects. ; )
- selimthegrim 3y agoI have to wonder whether Dorfman and Mattelart got to that one
- regularfry 3y agoI remember one of my teachers about 35 years ago telling us about a specific fern that concentrated gold in its roots. I can't remember the name of it but I'd recognise it by sight. It was interesting because as an organism it's virtually unchanged in appearance since examples of it were laid down in the coal layers. So it's not an unlikely story at all.
- regularfry 3y agoA flash of memory immediately after hitting reply and a quick google brings me to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0375674281901229 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/037567... - looks like gold accumulation is a myth, but it tends to accumulate arsenic which can be an indicator for the presence of gold.
- fipso 3y agoMagical Crops but irl
- alexpotato 3y agoIn an article(book maybe) about George Washington Carver [0], they mentioned how how recommended planting cowpeas as they are able to extract nitrogen from the air and put it back into the soil. This helped increase cotton yields when the cotton was planted in the same field after the cowpeas had been harvested. As a side note, the Haber Process [1] was the industrial version of this and all of the preceding points, if not phytomining per se, feel very similar. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
- ccorcos 3y agoYes, except Nitrogen comes from the air, and metals come from the soil…
- djha-skin 3y agoMy brother told me about these plants. He said that mines would plant them after they've already mined out as much of the ore as possible. They're really good at getting out that last little bit but they're not the first thing to reach for from a mining perspective.
- meschi 3y agoDo they plant them underground? Using artificial light? How are the minerals extracted from the plants? How is this profitable?
- vintermann 3y agoMines are almost never underground nowadays. They dig a big hole, or cut off a whole mountaintop.
- tiku 3y agoIn the game "the Riftbreaker" (Tower defense game with resource gathering / research tree) you can use plants to mine rare materials. How cool that it isn't far from reality.
- sharpshadow 3y agoThis is a great approach with huge opportunities for genetic modifications of in use organisms in correlation with their symbiotic relationships.
- bytK7 3y agoReminds me of Mel Chin’s art piece Revival Field[0], an attempt to remediate a hazardous waste area in Minnesota with plants. Apparently it is still going after more than 30 years. [0] https://melchin.org/oeuvre/artist-writing-revival-field/ https://melchin.org/oeuvre/artist-writing-revival-field/.