Bacteria in our Drinking Water

nachoworld writes "Normally we don't like bacteria in our water, but it seems this breakthru will allow us to use sulfate-reducing bacteria to clean up our water. Talk about "bugs" in our soup (ok, ok, I know that viruses are the bugs, bacterias are not, but I couldn't think of another joke)."

After the bubbles

[Chacham]

After the bacteria clumps all the unwanted materials, how do you get them out?

Food additive....

[azephrahel]

Don't worry, the FDA will probably require it to be listed as a food aditive. A few years ago someone bred a strain of bugs that would eat all the worms and other pests that would try to invade and eat corn(maize for non amiercans) in silos. Even though the bugs and their remains could not be found in the corn they had been in, the FDA said it had to be listed as a food additive. Why is this interesting? Because if you hose down your crop with chemical pesticides, which are found in abundant amounts in the food even when we eat it, the FDA does not require it being listed as a food aditive.

Basically, the FDA or some other goverment agency will find a way to make using any wonderfull and great new processies illigal, while keeping wastefull, dangerous and enviornmentally hostile processies standard and perfectly legal.

I want bacteria

[dmatos]

that consume the sulfur and zinc an produce something useful, like alcohol. Where can I get me some of those? Or maybe, we can get them to produce really cheap crack, and offer it to the /. moderators!

Mod me down. Please. I hit karma cap and I don't care.

Re:I want bacteria

[Kingfox]

From reading the article, the bacteria just extract the substances, absorbing them into 'balls'. Having the bacteria actually transform the zinc and sulfur atoms into something else is a bit less feasible. Who knows, bacteria that form vodka from tap water...

I wonder what sort of extraction methods they're planning on using to remove the 'balls' of toxin from the water after the bacteria is added.

Re: Bacteria in our Drinking Water

[keithdowsett]

I think there will be some problems implementing this as a water treatment for incoming water. It's more likely to be used in the treatment of waste water.

IFAIR sulphate reducing bacteria live in oxygen poor environments (which is why they reduce sulphate rather than using oxygen), and a common by-product is poisonous hydrogen sulphide. This isn't too pleasant in your drinking water, but is less of a problem when treating waste water.

Re:I want bacteria

[keithdowsett]

How about a microbe which consumes sucrose and water to create alcohol. That's how everyone else does it ;-) Keith.

Re:I want bacteria

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a microbe which consumes sucrose and water to create alcohol.

Yeah! ...

We could give it a high-tech sounding name, and do a big marketing blitz: We could call it something like "Relzionate", or "Plutiravan", or "Yeast"!

I vote for "Plutiravan". I don't know about you, but I wouldn't drink something made by a "Relzionate"?

Re:I want bacteria

[dmatos]

vodka from tap water...

I would be really impressed if you could actually do this, unless your tap water is much more contaminated than mine. Water is just hydrogen and oxygen, whereas the creation of alcohol requires the presence of some carbon atoms. Now, a bacteria that could internally do some nuclear reactions (necessary to construct C from O or H) would be very impressive indeed!

Please excuse my original post. I may have been under the alkafluence of inkohol, or smoking $3 crack. I'm practicing to be a moderator :)

Bacteria and their fragile existance

[Mad Hughagi]

I guess the point to make here is that you would have to implement a two-stage filtration system that firstly utilised the bacteria to filter out their portion of nasties and then to follow it up with a chlorination process to get rid of the usual bio-contaminants. You probably wouldn't want to do it in the other direction!

Another thing I was wondering is the relative stability of the bacteria in a mutational sense. Probably an unfounded concern, but it never pays to look into these things before hand. Then again if you implemented a chemical treatment after the bacteria treatment I guess it wouldn't matter.

Pretty neat solution, now we just need to find a bacteria that can eat all our trash, clean our air, decrease greenhouse emissions and restore the ozone layer.

To heck with drinking water, mining is the ticket.

[human bean]

Did anybody notice the ratio of concentration?

Consider this:
Find a heavy-metals rich undercurrent in the ocean, pump into tanks, run through bacteria farm, release back to sea. Use bacteria as ore for slightly modified conventional refining process.

Granted, you couldn't extract gold this way, as most of its existence in seawater is in the form of chloride, but there are a number of metals (silver, lead, uranium, thorium come to mind) that would be amenable.

Alternatively, locate sulphate-based ore bodies by ecologically benign means, drill holes into same, explosive fragment, and then pump bacteria-laden soup down hole and back out for extraction. I'll take a few well housings hidden in the trees over a strip-mine any day.

Re:After the bubbles

[abhinavnath]

Boil and filter. That's what we do to get rid of bacteria in drinking water at home (in India). Also exotic stuff like UV irradiation, ozone treatment, etc, but I don't think that would work too well on a ZnS-encased bacterium.

Latin was not your best subject

[k8ek8e]

"...viruses are the bugs, bacterias are not, but I couldn't think of another joke)."
Bacterium - singular Bacteria - plural
Next disk crash please don't ask "Where did all my datas go?"

Re:Food additive....

[spondylus]

Basically, the FDA or some other goverment agency will find a way to make using any wonderfull and great new processies illigal, while keeping wastefull, dangerous and enviornmentally hostile processies standard and perfectly legal.

Money talks.

Re:To heck with drinking water, mining is the tick

[JetJaguar]

That's an interesting idea. The first question I have though is do such heavy metal currents exist in the first place? I'm just curious what kind of mechanism would cause such a thing. Exposure of an ore rich deposit to water? It's seems to me that normal diffusion would probably be high enough that the concentration of said metals wouldn't be significantly higher than in normal sea water, but that's just little more than a guess.

Re:To heck with drinking water, mining is the tick

[human bean]

Such currents are well documented, especially in arctic regions. I am told changes in salinity and mineral content can vary greatly by depth in any one place. As to the cause, good question.

Even without such a current, though, the metals content of seawater, plus its availability and ease of handling have had engineers trying to work out extraction methods for some time.

bacteria are good

[unk1911]

i thought that some bacteria was a good thing?