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Science Technology

Harvesting Gold Nanoparticles WIth Alfalfa Plants 37

Posted by timothy from the buckwheat's-next dept.
Rocky Mudbutt writes: "An international research team from the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) and Mexico advanced the work at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL). Ordinary alfalfa plants are being used as miniature gold factories that one day could provide the nanotechnology industry with a continuous harvest of gold nanoparticles. Alfalfa extracts gold from the medium and stores it in the form of nanoparticles -- specks of gold less than a billionth of a meter across according to a press release from Stanford Linear Accelerator Center."
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Harvesting Gold Nanoparticles WIth Alfalfa Plants More

Harvesting Gold Nanoparticles WIth Alfalfa Plants

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  • ...after they cracked Alf-Alfa's head open looking for gold

    is there any gold in Buckwheat?

  • Dang, where's Rumplstilskin when you need him?

  • Oops... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @04:07PM (#4107457) Homepage Journal
    Man, and all this time I was trying to turn lead into gold...
  • "Money doesn't grow on trees"... but it DOES grow on alfalfa apparently.

    I'm curious to know if this is a property specific to alfalfa, or if other plants have the same propensity towards extracting metals from the medium in which they grow. I could be living on property that's 'green gold' (if only I put all my grass clippings through extensive centrifuging).

    -Sou|cuttr
    • I saw a documentary about 10 years ago where they used banana trees to harvest gold out of soil.

      Don't know how cost effective it was, but I suppose you could sell either bananas or gold, whichever had a better proffit margin.
      • but I suppose you could sell either bananas or gold, whichever had a better proffit margin.

        More likely since the banana fruit is just a small percentage of the 'tree's biomass, you would sell the bananas, then harvest the gold from the rest of the tree by burning it and extracting the gold from the ash. Commercial banana 'trees' only produce one harvest and then are cut down anyway. If you then processed the banana fruit by canning or drying, you could also recover any gold in the peels and stem as well.

        I also know they use plants to extract toxic waste [drilleronline.com] from abandoned industrial sites. The linked article says that alfafa, poplar trees and mustard plants are used for this. The process is called phytoremediation [google.com].

    • From the press release:

      "In this case, alfalfa was chosen as a model plant system for studying the ability of plants to extract gold from various growth media."
      AFAIK alfalfa is a fast-growing and quite easy plant, so it makes sense to use it as a model plant. The entire research was about
      "Will plants make gold nanoparticles?"

      Moreover, the entire meaning of the research was not to harvest gold, but to find a better way to produce these particles, which requires a lot of nast chemicals right now. The alfalfa plants were grown on gold-rich soil.

  • Profit comparison (Score:3, Informative)

    by coryboehne ( 244614 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @06:17PM (#4108234)
    When you consider the facts, it would be far more profitable for the average person to cultivate alfalfa to sell as hay, considering the minute amount of gold available in the plant matter, and the fact that a single bale of quality alfalfa hay can sell for 7-10 dollars, it quickly becomes appearant that there is better money in the hay. However the application in computer science is valuable beyond all actual value of the gold. On that note, I wonder exactly how much this should really reduce costs in producing such small particles of gold.
    • Might it be that the value is in the nanoparticles and the method of acquiring them, not the mass of gold?
      • Boy you people have a tendency to post before reading don't you, let me quote myself "However the application in computer science is valuable beyond all actual value of the gold. On that note, I wonder exactly how much this should really reduce costs in producing such small particles of gold" Are you really that stupid?

    • Alfalfa is sold by farmers by the ton, not by the bale. alfalfa, depending on quality and market conditions, might be sold from anywhere aroun 90 to 120 dollars a ton. a wire bale might be 80 - 90 lbs, or around there. so, farmers might get anywhere from 3 - 6 bucks a bale, not 7 - 10. now, how valuable is this gold? and how much can be harvested? well, the first question is the one that matters.

      When a farmer does something like this, this gold harvesting, they do it by contract, not open market like regular farm products. they agree to supply x-amount of the product, for x-price. now, if the price is more or less when they harvest, it doesn't matter. they're getting the same amount. problems come in when there's a crappy year, and yields are down. if the farmer doesn't supply the needed amount, the contract will usually dictate some kind of penalty. if he has a bumper crop, he can try to sell them more than what they thought they'd need, for whatever they'll give.

      Back home, there's a place that raises rye, and harvests the pollen from it, and that's it. that pollen is used to create a drug for prostate cancer. very expensive to make, cause there isn't much pollen in a little head of rye. but, they have a contract, and it's quite profitable for them.

      • Yes, but you will notice that I said for the average person, not, for the farmer. Sometimes I wonder if you people even read the comments, really, I do. However I will tell you then in average market conditions you are very correct about the price of hay... But then again you don't live in New Mexico do you... During the summer if there is a short supply (remember supply and demand?) the prices can go as high as $10 to $11 per bale. Now, I know that is highway robbery, but people still pay it, why? Because they don't want their damned horses to die. Sorry to crap on you, but you tried to crap on me first...
        • good point, but i don't think that these companies would go to roadside places or a hardware/general store for hay. they'd buy in bulk, directly from farms, where they can control the varieties of hay used, areas that may be more profitable, ect. and no, i'm in ohio, not NM. i doubt they'd compete with horses, though. they'd have a different market to shoot for, and i doubt they'd wanna worry if kentucky had a big horse-breeding year they prolly don't wanna have to worry about that, now would they.
          • Once again though, I was speaking of a small operation, if you'll read the thread above my first comment they were considering using it to extract gold in bulk to sell as bullion, in which case the value of the alfalfa would far exceed the value of the gold contained therin. You did'nt see that did you...

            • well, at first i was just commenting on pricing. i'll admit, i didn't even read the article. well, i read it, and we're both wrong.

              Consequently, the nanotechnology industry is very interested in processes that make gold nanoparticles for nano-scale electronic and optical devices.

              So, basically they want to use alfalfa in a controlled setting, with high concentrations of gold at their roots, to create nanoparticles

              of gold, not just gold bullion. actually, if you filter enough seawater, you can get gold bullion from there too. gold's everywhere, just in minute quantities. but the reason they'd use alfalfa is that the standard procedure now to create these nanoparticles uses really bad bad bad chemicals that the EPA hates. i'm not sure of concentrations, ect, but i'm betting that they wouldn't take just any ole alfalfa for this. i doubt there's as many gold particles in my ohio/midwest soil as there is in your new mexico/southwest soil.

              i agree, to extract for bullion, quite fewlish. like i said, seawater even has gold. actually, seawater contains every naturally occuring mineral, just in such small quantities to make it not worthwhile.

              • Gerf, did you read my first post? Let me dump it here for you "When you consider the facts, it would be far more profitable for the average person to cultivate alfalfa to sell as hay, considering the minute amount of gold available in the plant matter, and the fact that a single bale of quality alfalfa hay can sell for 7-10 dollars, it quickly becomes appearant that there is better money in the hay. However the application in computer science is valuable beyond all actual value of the gold. On that note, I wonder exactly how much this should really reduce costs in producing such small particles of gold." Note the last part in bold, you see, I did read the article, and I did know what I was talking about, now, don't take this wrong, but I take a small amount of insult from your stating that I was wrong, when, indeed I was exactly on point. Ok, either way, you're not a flamer, or a troll, so as far as I'm concerned gerf, you are ok... Just read my posts a little more carefully before commenting on them, k?

                • well, flamers and trolls usually don't get the +1 bonus... i think what happened is i read your post, replied on how pricing is actually done, then didn't read it again when you replied and we started referring to whatever it was.

                  i post from work, so i'm not really thorough when i'm trying not to view too many pages, use too much time here. oh welll, today's my last day anyway. i'm co-oping, leaving for school, not getting fired for /. Well, work's almost done, time to hit the bar

    • Could you extract the gold from the alfalfa and then sell use it as hay anyways?

      I suppose centrifuging would probably give you a little gold particle and a lot of alfalfa oatmeal-like (alfalfameal?) slop... not sure if the slop would still be useful?

      Oh, and there may be plants that do this better than alfalfa. It still depends on the amount of gold nanoparticles actually in the soil, but we could probably build/grow something that quickly sucks up what is available...

      Seems to me cactuses survive by sucking up what they need to live and harvesting what they have efficiently... wonder if they'd make good gold suckers. If they did, they'd have built-in protection, looters would have to watch out for those nasty spikes...
  • Anyone else take notice when they credited a Dr. Rumplestiltskin in their findings?
  • Instead of purchasing gold and then using alfalfa to "refine" the gold into nanoparticles, Why not engineer a species of kelp(or any other salt water plant) to leach gold directly from the ocean. As I understand it the ocean has a high concetration of gold and would be an excelent source.
  • of this horribly drawn-out procedure is to produce gold nano-particles, why not use a pulsed "laser" to zap a chunk of gold into small puffs of vapor, which will then condense into whatever sized particles you want? If you vary the temperature and pressure of the environment, you should be able to get any reasonably-sized particle you want.

    Alternatively, filter out the particles that are too large or too small, squish them back together, and zap 'em again!

  • This is nano-fabrication, not mineral extraction (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2002 @12:36PM (#4112847) Homepage
    Read the paper. [stanford.edu] This is a way of fabricating gold nanoparticles, not extracting gold. They grow small amounts of alfalfa in a controlled environment with extra gold in the soil. The gold nanoparticles are useful for some biosensor applications [aip.org], because they will bond to DNA and can easily be detected.

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