InSites is a quarterly newsletter that highlights the personalities and projects of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) of The University of Tennessee. WMREI is an affiliate of the EERC.
WMREI was created in 1985 as a state-funded Center of Excellence. Research areas include solid-, hazardous-, and nuclear-waste management; waste minimization; and pollution prevention.
Biotechnology is the focal point of the institute's technical research, while issues involving public attitudes and federal/state policies related to waste-management issues are the primary concerns of the institute's policy research.
For additional information about InSites, or to be added to our mailing list, please write InSites, WMREI, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-1156, or fax 865-974-1838. Or, if you prefer, e-mail Constance Griffith cbgriffith@utk.edu.
Table of Contents
Small Devices, Big Footprints By
Elise LeQuire Adopt-A-Watershed:
Reports from the Field By Janice S. Clifford War
of the Microbes By Janice S. Clifford Fluid
Ounces By Janice S. Clifford Absorbing Work By
Janice S. Clifford
WMREI Director Named to New National Research Council
Committee Staff
Citings
As electronics play an ever-increasing role in our lives, we need to
understand the tradeoff between convenience and environmental protection.
By Elise LeQuire
Rapid obsolescence is the hallmark of the digital age. Aging, worn-out, or just passé computers, cell phones, and other electronic equipment wind up in attics, basements, and eventually the landfill. Representatives from the public and private sectors convened on July 11 to explore market-driven incentives and cooperative strategies to reduce the environmental footprint of the electronics industry.
The conference, “Electronics Recycling: The Next Generation for Environmental Stewardship and Clean Products,” was hosted by the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC), an affiliate of UT’s Waste Management Research and Education Institute.
“It’s a time of transition in electronics recycling,” said Jack Barkenbus, executive director of the EERC. “Solutions must be market-driven; if not, government will have to step in.” In fact, many European Union countries already require manufacturers to take back their products at the end of their useful lives. In the United States, however, government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are working with the private sector, not only to encourage voluntary compliance with environmental objectives, but also to create commercial incentives to address a growing inventory of worn-out and discarded electronic equipment. Participants in the electronics-recyclling colloquium presented results of reports from DOE-funded projects.
Sows’ Ears to Silk Purses
The central issue on the table was how to turn a liability—hundreds of tons of waste materials per year, including many hazardous components—into an economic asset using a free-market approach, said Chuck Bernhard, a consultant with the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee (CROET), which co-sponsored the conference. CROET was established in 1995 by DOE to promote economic development in the private sector by developing jobs and helping to clean up the agency’s former weapons production facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. “The idea is to create jobs and profits,” Bernhard said.
At the same time, CROET wants to shrink the digital divide that separates the haves from the have-nots by training workers to recycle electronic components and putting computers in the hands of the disadvantaged so they can become productive citizens in today’s society, Bernhard said.
The Right Stuff
A major hurdle for recycling electronic equipment is to create demand for a growing supply of used parts. It takes ingenuity to find niche markets and keep recycled materials out of the waste stream, according to Ellen Jessop, co-founder of The Oak Ridge National Recycle Center (TORNRC).
TORNRC is a commercial entity owned by two corporations. In April 1998, CROET received a $4 million grant from DOE to manage and operate the National Electronics Recycling Center Pilot Project in Oak Ridge. A portion of the funds—$348,000—provided seed money for TORNRC.
The center accepts anything that plugs in. Workers dismantle the equipment by hand with no fancy tools, processing 80,000 pounds a week, which is about a fourth of the facility’s full capacity, Jessop said. As of the end of May, TORNRC had recycled 2 million pounds of electronic recyclable material.
In its first year of operation, TORNRC’s work force has grown from nine to 30 employees, including three displaced by government downsizing and two handicapped persons. “Recycling is a low-profit, high-labor-cost business,” Jessop says. But the center’s mission is not just economic. “We’re in the business of cleaning up Mother Earth.
With the help of a private company—Envirocycle, Inc., located in Hallstead, Pennsylvania—TORNRC was able to solve the technical hurdle of salvaging glass components from cathode ray tubes (CRTs), or monitors. Envirocycle has provided a regional fieldtest of the ENV 25, a saw that can separate low-lead from heavily leaded glass. Potential markets for the recycled glass product include decorative glass artwork and use of the glass as a component in concrete that can be used to make bricks, benches, and planters. The giant retailer Wal-Mart, for example, is marketing a recycled-glass Eco-Planter.
A Greener Image
Keeping the plastic, metal, chemical, and glass components out of the landfill is only one way to reduce the environmental impact of electronics equipment. More companies, aware of their environmental image as well as increasing regulations worldwide, are seeking to minimize their toll on the environment.
With a proven track record at promoting cleaner technologies and cleaner products, UT’s Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies (CCPCT) entered the arena of electronics recycling in 1994. Gary Davis, the director of CCPCT, said the center draws on the expertise of the entire campus and works closely with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to provide technical, economic, and social-science resources to industry. The Center has evaluated policies embodying the principle of extended producer responsibility, which places primary responsibility for the management of the environmental impacts of products on the producers of the products.
CCPCT has also been a leader in the practice of life-cycle assessment in the United States, Davis said, helping industry find cleaner solutions at every stage of the product life cycle, from manufacturing, to use, to ultimate disposal, through changes in the design of the product. The center works closely with EPA’s Design for the Environment Program (DfE) headquartered in Washington, D.C., to find alternative processes and chemicals for electronics manufacturing. The DfE program, created in 1992 by EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics to form voluntary partnerships with multiple stakeholders, helps industry make decisions early in the design stage of products and manufacturing processes.
For the printed wiring board industry, which manufactures computer circuit boards, CCPCT has evaluated seven potential substitutes for the electroless copper plating bath process that has been the industry standard for 40 to 50 years. The process uses a number of dangerous chemicals including formaldehyde, a suspected carcinogen. “We evaluate the materials in terms of performance, cost, and environmental and health factors,” said Jack Geibig, a senior research associate with CCPCT. “Our goal is to provide information and let industry choose.” In fact, there are incentives for manufacturers to choose a less environmentally damaging process or chemical. First, CCPCT’s project is endorsed by EPA, which lends credibility to a manufacturer that wants to promote a green image. Second, the research is conducted independently rather than by chemical suppliers, who might have an economic stake in the results. Geibig says the chemical suppliers are willing to provide proprietary information to CCPCT because of its established track record at maintaining confidentiality.
In addition, the Center has nearly completed a project that evaluates substitutes for the lead surface on circuit boards. CCPCT researchers found five substitutes that performed equally well, were cheaper, and posed reduced environmental impacts, Geibig said. Manufacturers can use the information to draw their own conclusions about which substitute meets their specific needs.
Monitoring the Environment
Computer companies from Japan, Korea, and the United States are also cooperating with UT’s CCPCT to evaluate cost, performance, and the environmental impacts of two types of electronic monitors. Maria Socolof, CCPCT senior research associate, reported on a complete life-cycle assessment of flat panel displays (FPDs)—which use a liquid crystal display (LCD)—and cathode ray tubes (CRTs). The study looked at 17-inch CRTs and 15-inch LCDs, which have an equivalent viewable area. The assessment considers the manufacturing process from cradle to grave, that is from extraction of raw materials, to manufacturing, to use, and ultimately to disposal of the product.
This quantitative analysis, based on data provided by 23 companies, examines such impacts as energy use, lead disposal, air and water quality, and human health and environmental impacts. The project, funded in part by DfE, is scheduled to be completed in spring 2001. This assessment will allow companies to consider each type of impact separately and also to weigh the overall impacts of production and the whole life cycle of the monitors.
The consensus of the group, Davis said, was that electronics recycling is technically and economically feasible, but there must be much more involvement by producers of electronic goods in establishing the collection and recycling infrastructure and in designing products that are more amenable to reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling. As an adjunct, government, particularly the federal government, can use its purchasing power to promote the design of greener electronics products and the involvement of producers in the recycling infrastructure.
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For more information contact Gary Davis, EERC, the University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4251.
Adopt-A-Watershed: Reports from the Field
Now in its fourth year, the Knox County Adopt-A-Watershed Program has created a cadre of believers who incorporate the precepts of watershed preservation and health into their lesson plans.
By Janice S. Clifford
U.S. President James A. Garfield once quipped that a school is a teacher at one end of a log and a student at the other end. Since Garfield’s day, that relationship has evolved considerably. In fact, when it comes to environmental education, the relationship is more likely to involve teachers and students standing, together, knee-deep in a creek.
The National Adopt-A-Watershed Program (see “Bringing Science to Life in a Living Classroom,” InSites, Spring 1999) instructs and encourages teachers to use their local watersheds as living laboratories where their students can become involved in hands-on activities that impart lessons on environmental responsibility while improving the health of the watersheds through community-service projects.
Ruth Anne Hanahan, a senior research assistant for the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Water Resources Research Center (WRRC) and Tim Gangaware, WRRC associate director, oversee the Knox County Adopt-A-Watershed Program and supervise the Knoxville-Knox County Community Action Committee (CAC) AmeriCorps members, who help teachers implement the program and select curriculum-related activities.
Education Alfresco
According to Hanahan, Adopt-A-Watershed encourages students, under their teachers’ guidance, to investigate, explore, and monitor the condition of their local watersheds. In the process, students learn to appreciate the important contribution watersheds make to a community’s overall environmental health. Beyond that, she says, students learn the importance of responsible environmental stewardship.
WRRC manages the Knox County program with help from its Water Quality Forum partners, including the city of Knoxville, Knox County, Ijams Nature Center, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Natural Resource Conservation Service, and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.
Now beginning its fourth year, the Knox County Adopt-A-Watershed Program conducted training workshops from June 19-22 to introduce the program to new teachers for the 2000-2001 school year. In the workshops, the new teachers learned about the features of the program and heard from the program’s “veterans.”
Voice of Experience
Although the program primarily emphasizes the scientific curriculum, other subjects are also represented. Carol Vinson, an art teacher from Knoxville’s Holston Middle School, incorporates the program into the activities of an after-school art club.
“After all, artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were interested in both the arts and sciences,” she says. For one of their projects, students in the art club used Styrofoam and paint to create a to-scale three-dimensional model of their watershed. Ultimately, Vinson wants to turn the model into a permanent concrete sculpture that will be displayed on the school grounds.
Kathy Ferguson, a teacher from Farragut High School in West Knoxville, insists that Adopt-A-Watershed is “the best program I’ve been involved with in my 15 years of teaching.” Ferguson describes it as “hitting on key administrative goals—particularly cooperative learning and interdisciplinary investigation—and is the keystone for my class.” In one of the service-learning projects, her students planted 21 trees around the campus.
Tom Jursik, a teacher at Powell Middle, also plans to plant trees on campus. Jursik, who has access to the school’s on-site greenhouse, currently has more than 100 saplings being nurtured by his science classes.
While waiting for the seedlings to mature, Jursik and his students brought their school’s watershed indoors by building a “water park” in the school library. The librarian allotted space for aquariums to house fish native to Beaver Creek. Jursik and his students later incorporated a 250-gallon pond into their indoor watershed. To give the experience of actually being in a watershed, Jursik is working with the art department to have art students draw murals of the Beaver Creek Watershed for use as a backdrop.
Tonya Williams, an ecology teacher from South Doyle High School, says her students came away from the Adopt-A-Watershed Program “knowing a lot more about watersheds than they could ever find in a textbook.” Her class wrote, designed, and produced a newsletter, which the students titled The Blair Fish Project. The students’ goal was to share with their community the particulars of their watershed-related projects. Researching and producing the publication incorporated computer technology with hands-on watershed activities.
Mary Jane Kirkham, a science teacher from Fulton High School, has enthusiastically embraced the program, as has the head of the school’s science department. Both have helped to integrate Adopt-A-Watershed into other disciplines. The science and math departments, for instance, designed and built an outdoor classroom with the assistance of the AmeriCorps volunteers. Meanwhile, the school’s business teacher had students investigate measures that local businesses could take to become more “watershed friendly.”
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For more information contact Ruth Anne Hanahan, WRRC, the University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-9124.
Measures to protect the Martian environment—and our own—from microbial contaminants must accompany our efforts to discover life on the red planet.
By Janice S. Clifford
In the science-fiction classic War of the Worlds, the Martian invaders are ultimately destroyed, but not by a military Goliath. Instead, they’re defeated by a viral David—the chicken pox virus—for which they have no natural immunity.
In the early years of the space program, fear of such contamination reaching Earth from outer space forced astronauts returning from the moon into quarantine. In fact, when Neil Armstrong and his Apollo crew returned from the moon in 1969, they were quarantined for three weeks to make sure no moon viruses hitched a ride back to Earth. Those fears were pretty much laid to rest when no life of any type was detected on the moon.
Now, aerospace engineers are reaching out to Mars, and some of those old fears have resurfaced. In the case of Mars, the fear of contamination works both ways; scientists are equally as concerned about contaminating the Martian environment with Earth microbes as they are about Martian microbes attacking Earth.
Invasive Space Species
In 1998, David C. White, of the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Pellissippi Center for Environmental Biotechnology, was named a visiting scientist for 18 months with NASA’s Planetary Protection Project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. His task was to help NASA perfect methods of preventing microbes on Earth spacecraft from contaminating Martian soil and rock samples. NASA, and the Planetary Protection Project, want to make sure that if and when life is discovered “out there,” it will truly be extraterrestrial and not a byproduct of an Earth invasion.
“If there is life on Mars, we want the discovery of life to be unequivocal,” White says. “That is why it is so important to prevent any contamination.”
White is also helping NASA prevent back contamination by ensuring that any life forms found on Mars don’t make their way back to Earth, where they might alter Earth’s biological makeup.
Life is insidious; we share the world with relatively harmless bacteria, encountering billions of microbes on a daily basis. But if we upset the delicate environmental balance, the results could prove catastrophic. If there is life elsewhere, we cannot count on the cold, vacuum, or radiation in space to destroy any bugs clinging to the skin of a spacecraft. According to White, there are some Earth spores—the dormant forms of bacteria and fungi—that could survive the harsh conditions of space travel.
White has studied organisms found in some of Earth’s harshest environments, and he believes some microbes could survive a trip through space. There are habitats on Earth, he points out, with temperatures near boiling or below freezing, virtually bereft of water or oxygen, or containing water that is highly acidic or salty. And yet, organisms still grow.
Space Treaty
NASA, and other space-faring nations, long ago established guidelines for preventing contamination in either direction. The Space Treaty of 1967, for instance, specifically requires that all space exploration be designed to prevent any harmful contamination to other celestial bodies as well as any changes in Earth’s environment through contamination by extraterrestrial microbes.
Then there’s the challenge Earth-bound scientists face in identifying any life forms brought back in soil samples or even attached to equipment and spacecraft. In particular, how will scientists know they’re studying a Martian microbe and not one indigenous to Earth?
“If life is found on Mars,” White says, “the real trick is to make sure that what we are seeing is actually life from Mars, not life from Pasadena."
According to White, not only must there be no living—and therefore, reproducing—organisms on the spacecraft, “but, considering the extraordinary analyses returned samples will undergo, there must be no ‘dead-bug’ bodies that may be confused with Martian biomarkers."
Protection of spacecraft assembly areas to prevent contamination is a daunting task.
“Imagine,” says White, “the difficulty of assembling a complex rocket in a sterile, ultraclean facility where you are enclosed in a space suit as if you were handling an Ebola virus.”
The inevitable contamination must be detected and removed if possible with techniques that leave no biomarker residues. Among the “sanitizing” techniques being explored are the use of gases of ionic plasmas that destroy biomarker molecules and active surfaces that facilitate self-cleaning. The ionic-plasma approach was developed from UT-based research by Atmospheric Glow Technologies in Rockford, Tennessee.
“Any residual biomarker-like molecules left on the spacecraft surface after cleaning must be tagged so their Earth-based origin is clear,” says White.
Contamination that might occur after the Martian samples are returned to Earth is also the subject of concern, says White. “We are presently analyzing moon rocks, each with a 30-year history of being handled, to define the contamination we might expect for Martian samples.”
NASA Short-staffed
When NASA found no life through Viking, which visited the Martian surface 20 years go, it fired its team of biologists. After the issue of Mars’ microbe contamination resurfaced, the agency had only a tiny group of biologists on staff and is now scrambling to rebuild that aspect of the space program.
So far, the major concern has been about the possible contamination of Mars by Earth microbes. This is primarily because of the nature of our current one-way exploration of the red planet. To date, there has been little public concern about possible back contamination, but that could change after the media devote increased coverage to NASA’s plans to return soil samples from Mars in approximately eight years. NASA plans to gather Martian soil using a probe, which will then dispatch the samples back to Earth. The soil canisters will drop onto the Utah desert.
“Finding a Martian life form in returned samples may be difficult, especially if that life form is unfamiliar,” says White. “If it moves or reproduces, our task will be much easier, and that possibility is much more likely if there is liquid or water present with the samples.”
If, on the other hand, the returned samples present scientists with a fossil of an ancient life form, investigators must search for evidence of conditions that might have sustained the organism.
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For more information contact David White, Pellissippi Center for Environmental Biotechnology, University of Tennessee, 10515 Research Dr., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37932-2575, or call 865-974-8001.
Water
is the essence of human life, both on Earth and in space, but it’s also heavy.
By Janice S. Clifford
The future success of human exploration in space does not rely solely on engineering technology but also on biology, particularly microbiology. NASA recently awarded several grants to researchers at the University of Tennessee’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB) as part of a program to develop life-support systems for spacecraft. (For information on another NASA grant, see “Critters in Space,” InSites, Spring 2000.)
Among the grants was a three-year, $66,000 award to Kim Cook, a graduate research assistant with CEB. Cook is developing a community of microorganisms for use in recycling the water used in hydroponics systems. Hydroponics systems grow plants in nutrient-enriched water instead of soil. The project is part of NASA’s Bioregenerative Life Support Systems (BLSS) program, which is devising systems for long-term space missions. If successful, Cook’s research could reduce the payloads of water, food, and oxygen loaded onto outgoing space flights.
The Ingredients of Life
Whenever man leaves the protection of the Earth’s biosphere, he must take the vital ingredients of life with him–food, water, and oxygen. Future missions, particularly those requiring both greater time and distance, such as a trip to Mars, would require an enormous supply of those important resources. In fact, the supply could be so large as to make such a trip infeasible. NASA, however, is intent on developing sustainable and self-renewing life-support systems.
Water recovery, or recycling, in particular, promises the most substantial savings in resources. A water-recovery system can reduce the water needs of four crew members over a 90-day period by nearly 10 tons. And in the realm of space travel, weight is money. Such a reduction in water would save the International Space Station (ISS) $560 million per year.
Research in advanced life support programs (ALS) is currently under way at three NASA centers: Kennedy Space Center, Ames Research Center, and Johnson Space Center. Cook, who worked at Kennedy for five years before coming to CEB, is developing a community of microorganisms that can be inoculated into rhizospheres—the plant’s absorbing root-soil interface—to maintain a healthy and productive hydroponics system aboard spacecraft.
Regenerative Plant Systems
Humans consume oxygen, food, and water, while expelling carbon dioxide and organic wastes. Plants absorb and use that carbon dioxide while producing edible growth, releasing oxygen, and purifying water. Unfortunately, bioregenerative life-support systems are susceptible to a number of hazards, any one of which could “decimate the entire crop through the spread of infected plant tissue and spores via the hydroponics solution,” Cook says.
“The real question,” Cook says, “is whether it is possible to develop a group of microorganisms capable of handling the contaminants in gray water, which is the waste water produced through laundering, showering, and washing.”
Although plants and their rhizospheres can successfully recycle small amounts of gray water, the effects of chronic exposure to the chemicals present in gray water can adversely affect the health of the entire plant population.
And according to Cook, gray water is the largest single source of these waste products in bioregenerative life-support systems, and “the biggest problem with gray water is in the soap, which produces excessive microbial growth due to large amounts of carbon.” A special soap, Igepon, was developed for use on the International Space Station. Although Igepon is a sodium-based soap, it remains the primary source of excess carbon in gray water.
Above and Below
Cook’s project is more of a feasibility study since there is still uncertainty regarding the possibility of producing a stable community of organisms for use in hydroponics systems in space. CEB Director Gary Sayler contends that Cook’s work will lead to “a better understanding of the very nature of these microbial communities, as well as the ability to manipulate and control them.” As of yet, Sayler admits, “very little is known about the fundamental properties of such communities” and how they might be used to benefit the space program.
But the benefits of such research might also accrue to those who never leave the Earth’s atmosphere. More efficient water recycling systems could benefit western states where water is scarce, southern states where the depletion of groundwater is forming sinkholes, and the growing water needs of expanding populations throughout the world.
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For more information contact Kim Cook, CEB, The University of Tennessee, Dabney Hall, Knoxville, TN 37996-1605, or call 865-974-8080.
A
UT chemistry professor has developed tiny beads that promise a large payoff
By Janice S. Clifford
It’s not unusual for University of Tennessee (UT) professors to become absorbed in their work, but in the case of Spiro Alexandratos, a chemistry professor, the phrase can be applied almost literally. Alexandratos, in conjunction with researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has developed two types of polymer beads that absorb pollutants from water through a process termed “ionic recognition.” Most recently, by creating tiny polymer beads that are filled with compounds attractive to specific metals and then covering the beads with a semipermeable covering, Alexandratos has devised a highly selective filtering system for purifying water laced with various contaminants.
Alexandratos has been working with polymer bead purification techniques since the early 1980s and helped develop beads that selectively separate radioactive and chemical wastes from water. Alexandratos’ early research resulted in a polymer bead called Diphonix, which was developed in conjunction with Argonne National Laboratory. In initial trials of Diphonix, the uranium in an Argonne Laboratory waste solution was reduced 300,000 times, to only two parts per billion.
Evolving Research
Alexandratos and researchers at ORNL’s Chemical Separations Group have recently developed a new bead that builds on the past work with Diphonix. Whereas Diphonix picks up metal ions—positively charged particles—the new bead, Biquat, picks up negatively charged particles called anions.
“The bead lets the pollutant in, but once the pollutant is in, it’s trapped,” says Alexandratos. “Contaminated groundwater can be filtered through a column of beads, and depending on the compound, specific ions or anions can be selectively removed from the water.”
Alexandratos compares the beads to the netting on a basketball hoop. “Imagine the bottom of the netting becoming smaller than the ball,” he says. “The ball would go in, but it couldn’t pass on through. It would be stuck in the net until someone came along and released it.”
After the Biquat beads become saturated with anions, the beads can be cleaned for reuse by passing them through solutions that remove the anions and concentrate them into just a few gallons of fluid. “The pollutants in an entire lake of water could be reduced to a gallon of concentrated contamination,” says Alexandratos. This is particularly valuable in clearing groundwater of pollutants from nuclear operations.
Hot Lagoons
At the Department of Energy’s (DOE) uranium-enrichment plants in Paducah, Kentucky, and Portsmouth, Ohio, radioactive technetium pollutes the groundwater. The groundwater at DOE sites where uranium or plutonium has been processed is frequently contaminated with this radionuclide, a fission product of uranium and plutonium that has a half-life of more than 200,000 years.
The DOE sites at Paducah and Portsmouth are typical of this type of contamination. Solutions contaminated with Technetium have been stored in lagoons and burial pits. From there, the contaminants seep into groundwater. In near-surface groundwater, the primary form of the element Technetium is the pertechnetate anion, which Biquat is specifically designed to absorb.
Considering the long half-life and the extreme mobility of technetium, this contaminant is a significant regulatory concern to DOE. In terms of cleanup, however, isolating Technetium proved to be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. But Biquat’s selectivity changed all that.
Biquat contains both small and large positively charged groups within its resin beads. The small groups promote fast exchange, while the large groups are highly selective for the pertechnetate anions.
Beads as Miners
Cleanup of contaminated groundwater is not the only use Alexandratos foresees for resin bead technology. Extraction of valuable minerals is also possible using the beads’ highly selective properties. “Hydrometallurgy may be a prime application,” says Alexandratos. “In mining, particularly copper mining, the resin beads can selectively lock on the metal in the ore and extract it from a solution.”
Copper mines that have been depleted by standard extraction methods still contain low-grade ore. By passing a solution from the mining site through a column of the polymer beads designed to recognize and remove minute amounts of metal ions, mining sites once considered closed can still produce metal. Diphonix is already in use in copper mines in Mexico, making their process more energy efficient.
Whether in cleanup or recovery processes, the polymer beads, through their selective properties, simplify a previously cumbersome process. Diphonix, Biquat, and future incarnations of the polymer beads can change clean-up and extraction procedures from hit-or-miss to right-on-target.
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For more information contact Spiro Alexandratos, Chemistry Department, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-1600, or call 865-974-3399.
WMREI Director Named to New National Research Council Committee
Gary Sayler, director of the University of Tennessee’s Waste Management Research and Education Institute, has been appointed to the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Long-Term Research Needs for Deactivation and Decommissioning at the Department of Energy (DOE).
The 11-member committee was formed by the NRC's Board on Radioactive Waste Management to identify areas of research that hold promise for developing new technologies for decontaminating DOE sites—some of which are so large and complex that cleaning them is almost impossible with current means.
Sayler also serves as a UT professor of microbiology, directs the university’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology, and holds patents on environmental gene probing, genetic engineering for bioremediation, and bioelectronic sensor technology.
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PROJECTS.
Over the past two years, EERC’s Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies (CCPCT) has assisted Green Seal in developing an environmental standard for food packaging. In conjunction with that project, CCPCT helped to evaluate an EarthShell container for Green Seal certification. CCPCT researchers involved in the project included Research Scientist Mary Swanson, who served as Principle Investigator, CCPCT Director Gary Davis, Senior Research Associate Kerry Kelly, and Research Associate Rajive Dhingra. EarthShell Corporation, which developed its environmentally friendly hinged-lid sandwich container for the food service industry, is piloting the product at 100 McDonald’s locations across the nation. The container is made from limestone, starch reclaimed from the processing of french fries and potato chips, and post-consumer recycled paper fiber.
PRESENTATIONS.
Research Leader Mary English was invited to address the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) International Symposium on Risk and Governance, which was held in June at Airlie Center in Warrenton, Virginia. English’s paper, “Environmental Risk and Justice,” will compose a chapter in a book resulting from the symposium. English and other leaders in risk-related fields from 30 countries are laying groundwork for the first World Congress on Risk Analysis planned by the SRA for June 2002 in Europe.
In August, Graduate Research Assistant Jeff Duncan presented “Assessing the role of Debris Dams in Urban Stream Restoration and Management” at the American Water Resources Association’s International Conference on Riparian Ecology and Management in Multi-use Watersheds held in Portland, Oregon. Duncan’s paper discusses the capacity of streams to retain coarse organic materials that improve not only aquatic habitat but also stream conditions, through nutrient retention, cycling, and transport.
AWARDS.
The Waste Management Research and Education Institute recently distributed supplemental stipends of $3000 for academic year 2000-2001 to four doctoral candidates. Pedro Sanhueza (nominated by Greg Reed, Head, Civil and Environmental Engineering [CEE]) is researching the health effects and associated policy and economic issues of ozone pollution, along with Reed and Susan Smith (Health and Safety Sciences). Shawn Hawkins (nominated by Reed), whose research at the Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB) included the genetic evaluation of microbial communities in wastewater treatment systems, recently completed work for his M.S. under Kevin Robinson (CEE). Michael Allen (nominated by Robert Moore, Head, Microbiology) is studying a bacterial strain to control process upsets in an industrial wastewater treatment system. Melissa Lenczewski (nominated by William Dunne, Head, Geological Sciences), is researching the migration and biodegradation of trichloroethylene in fractured clay-rich materials, along with Larry McKay (Geological Sciences).
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