This entry is submitted by Gloria Gamat, via Creative Reporter.The triple problem that is among the greatest challenges to the environmental health: waste, water, energy. Bruce Rittmann, director of the Center for Environmental Biotechnology in the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University strongly believes that these issues are closely interrelated and that the pollution problems that the world have at present are just energy put in the wrong place and causing trouble.

To address these challenges, Rittman and his international colleagues gathered at a symposium held at ASU last April to work on a roadmap for biology-based solutions to turn these threats into opportunities. Their paper was published as the cover story in the latest issue of Environmental Science & Technology.

The solution they came up with is a synergistic marriage of two distinct disciplines: microbial ecology and environmental biotechnology. To start on this, revolutionary changes in compiling vast amounts of genetic information on microbial organisms through state-of-the-art DNA-based techniques have to be done.

With recent advances in biology, materials, computing, and engineering, environmental biotechnologists now are able to use microbial communities for a wealth of services to society. These include detoxifying contaminated water, wastewater, sludge, sediment, or soil; capturing renewable energy from biomass; sensing contaminants or pathogens; and protecting the public from dangerous exposure to pathogens.

Rittmann's center puts some of these technologies into service, identifying microorganisms that help clean up pollutants such as trichloroethene (TCE) and perchlorate from the water supply and generating electricity from wastewater.

"Scientifically, it might be easiest to let the microbes convert the energy is organic wastes directly to electricity. However, they also can generate useful fuels, such as methane and hydrogen, and we are pursuing research on all of these renewable-energy forms."

Rittmann believes the key to achieving success through microbial ecology and biotechnology is to take advantage of microbial diversity as much as possible, particularly having different microbe to perform the same role. "It usually isn't just one organism, a superbug or magic bullet," says Rittmann. "Instead, the best results require a community of microorganisms."

Bruce Rittman believes that success in capturing the energy out of waste materials, would be a world-transforming technology and a real step forward to using more renewable forms of energy and much less reliance on fossil fuel.

Source: EurekAlertAbout Gloria Gamat: Gloria is a Chemist and a single mom. Gloria also blogs about motherhood at EMothersOnline and about life and travel in the Philippines at The Philippine Culture Blog and at Pinoy Travel Blog respectively.