Iron-eating bacteria naturally produce minerals that act like tiny rechargeable batteries, and this project will turn those biological minerals into a tool for cleaning up polluted water and recovering valuable metals. These iron-based "biogeobatteries" have existed for billions of years, but their practical use has stalled. Laboratory versions rely on nanoparticles that raise safety and regulatory concerns, and scientists lack good ways to analyse how the minerals behave in real environments. The project tackles both problems at once. If successful, the work could change how we treat contaminated water and industrial waste. Instead of mining fresh ore for metals like chromium, copper, and cadmium, we could recover them from polluted sources using these biological minerals. That would reduce mining's environmental footprint and turn a waste problem into a resource. The team is also building a database called MinSight to help researchers and industries share and interpret the complex data these materials generate. This is fundamental science with clear practical potential. The deeper understanding of how microbes and minerals exchange electrons could also inform work on greenhouse gas production, water quality, and the movement of toxic metals through soils and aquifers.
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All life on Earth relies upon the movement of electrons between oxidized and reduced compounds in processes which have been demonstrated to produce a wide array of reactive materials. For example, there are different iron (Fe) specific bacteria which transfer electrons between reduced (Fe(II)) and oxidized (Fe(III)) oxidation states and lead to the formation of biogenic minerals (biominerals) ranging from rust to magnetic nanomaterials. These iron biominerals often have properties which make them excellent sponges of contaminants such as heavy metals, and can often transform dangerous pollutants to much safer alternatives. Nevertheless, the application of iron biominerals has yet to be fully realised despite the fact that they have been in existence for billions of years. One particular category of iron biominerals are biogeobatteries, which are iron bearing minerals that can undergo both oxidation and reduction. This contrasts with other iron biominerals which can only do one or the other. This FLF has so far explored the role of biogeobatteries in the environment and found that they have the potential for environmental and industrial applications. For example, they have been shown to be able to recover economically important metals (such as chromium, copper, and cadmium) from contaminated sources, and remediate different environments. The renewal phase of this FLF will build upon this knowledge which has so far mostly relied upon the use of nanoparticles, i.e. particles with diameters 1000s time smaller than a human hair, which do not currently meet regulatory and safety concerns. Furthermore, understanding how these biogeobatteries behave in the environment is problematic due to complexities with understanding spectroscopy and other analytical methods. To overcome these challenges, the renewal phase of the FLF will focus on three main objectives: synthesizing stable, functionalized biogeobatteries; using these biogeobatteries to recover valuable metals from contaminated water and waste sources; and finally developing the MinSight database to integrate various analytical techniques and support data sharing and interpretation. Potential applications include environmental remediation, where biogeobatteries can remove contaminants from drinking water and waste streams, and metal recovery, which reduces the need for primary ore mining and supports sustainable resource management. The MinSight platform will facilitate the analysis and sharing of complex environmental data, benefiting researchers and industries involved in environmental monitoring and remediation. The project involves a team of researchers with expertise in microbiology, spectroscopy, and environmental science. Future directions include exploring the scalability and regulatory compliance of biogeobatteries and expanding the analytical platform to include more tools and support a wider range of users, including industry partners. The proposed work is exceptionally innovative and spans multiple disciplines, integrating environmental mineralogy, geochemistry, and geomicrobiology with advanced computational methods for data analysis. This approach aims to pioneer a new and exciting field within environmental science. Successfully completing this project will significantly enhance our fundamental understanding of microbe-mineral interactions and the utilization of natural resources to address energy storage needs. Additionally, this research will have extensive implications, ranging from the role of bacteria in greenhouse gas production or sequestration to improvements in water quality and the mitigation of toxic metal and metalloid release into aquifers, soils, and sediments.
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