Can We Use Bacteria to Refine Rare Earths?

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Asianometry

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 192

@the-quintessenz 10 ай бұрын

Since lithium is concentrated in tobacco, we could use the lungs of smokers as a resource depot.

@smbatman123 10 ай бұрын

It’s about being green

@Sniperboy5551 10 ай бұрын

As a nicotine addict, I agree

@ERBEpic 10 ай бұрын

@@smbatman123humans are the most green animals on the planet

@WhereisMelania 10 ай бұрын

No different from wringing out our shite for the water. Probably way less gross.

@0neIntangible 10 ай бұрын

Cough, cough...

@ashmoleproductions5407 9 ай бұрын

This field is called Bioming. It involves two processes and needs the presence of Iron (or Molybdenum to a much smaller extant) or Sulfur as fuel for the microorganisms. These processes are bioleaching or biooxidation. Bioleaching dissolves the required minerals using acid the bacteria regenerate the acid. Biooxidation dissolves everything but the metal you want usually gold. Currently getting my masters in the topic

@Xylos144 10 ай бұрын

In The US we don't refine monozite ores because it includes Thorium, and while the EPA will let mining companies toss any thorium-containing ore back into the ground and pretend like they never dug it up, if they refine the ore at all to extract anything, that *technically* concentrates the thorium, and now you have a whole bunch of regulations dealing with radioactivity and nuclear material to deal with. So we don't do it. Because we have to treat an alpha emitter with a 14 billion year half-life like it's cobalt 60.

@FutureBoyWonder 10 ай бұрын

I'm willing to wager there is a bit more to this story

@obsidianjane4413 10 ай бұрын

@@FutureBoyWonder There is, thousands of similar regulations and red tape that make it not worth while here. That is the only reason why China has the market locked up.

@defeatSpace 10 ай бұрын

@@FutureBoyWonder then elaborate 😅

@RonJohn63 10 ай бұрын

@@FutureBoyWonder of course there is: OMG radiation!!!

@bobweiram6321 10 ай бұрын

Thorium is nasty stuff. It's highly toxic and not just radioactive.

@CaptainManic2010 10 ай бұрын

Dude just the bloody title is enough to earn a like and comment. You're brilliant mate. Thanks for your work.

@schmitzbeats6102 10 ай бұрын

Modern electronics junk should have rare earths in comparatively higher concentrations. We should do more recycling. Screens, Leds, Speakers, Motors.

@bravosierra2447 10 ай бұрын

I am the least technical minded person there is around. But for some reason I find your presentations very interesting & I try my best to listen & understand. Good job you’re doing.

@michaelhart7569 10 ай бұрын

IMO, the potential is actually greater than you describe. Smith and Winter received the Nobel prize for chemistry in 2018 for their work on phage display in bacteria. This allows for the directed evolution of bacterial proteins infected with viral phage proteins. The power of this directed evolution technique is awesome. If the value of the metal purified is great enough, then many things become economically possible. One springs to my mind. When somebody takes the trouble to do so, they will probably be able to produce bacterial-phage proteins that can selectively extract Uranium235 from seawater, in preference to extracting the unwanted Uranium238. The economic consequences of that are tremendous for world energy production.

@Luis-qe8el 10 ай бұрын

Love Asianometry, and seeing ppl sharing like this, even if its just a thing thats in the discovery process horizon, puts a smile on my soul... Thanks for sharing Amazing topic Asianometry!!

@SammyGDude 10 ай бұрын

I hope this is up there on the comments- I haven't watched yet, but this channel does a really good job providing an overview of a topic. I just left a big South Korean semi MFG here in the states; really cool to get a background on some of the equipment. To those wondering: chip fabs are the most intricate system I've ever seen; Tesla was huge brute force, where semi is just endless aims of perfection, machine after machine, row after row, department after department.... There is no secret sauce- each machine has it's own incredible lineage to get to the design its at. Very cool.

@timwildauer5063 10 ай бұрын

Fascinating, I never would have guessed you could use bacteria in this way. Another amazing video, as always. We greatly appreciate you!

@TheSpizzaboy 10 ай бұрын

Did you know. Plants can do this too. Cannabis plants have already been researched for their ability to concentrate bio toxic metals.

@PplsChampion 10 ай бұрын

4:45 you got me, it worked

@samw5767 10 ай бұрын

Again, great video. REE's being *rare* but not rare. Just curious: has Asianometry come across any biological/microbial research on the separation of Nd/Pr, which are chemically very similar? As I understand it, the challenge posed by their separation is a significant bottleneck in the recycling and refining of scrap rare earth magnets, on an industrial scale.

@danheidel 10 ай бұрын

If iron nitride magnets live up to their promise, we could be looking at a market collapse of neodymium at least.

@crow2989 10 ай бұрын

God this channel is so great. Showing me things i’ve never even thought up. I wonder what the future of Biological Applications of living creatures will look like once we develop better methods and technology to properly and safely use different forms of life to our advantage

@BurleyBoar 10 ай бұрын

Anyone else remember a mid scifi book aimed at young adults that had this as the solution to the book? I read it around 1989 in 7th or 8th grade. For the love of me I can not remember it's name. The plot was humans colonized a seemingly perfect planet and ooops all the metal is not concentrated anywhere and spread around. It makes life difficult for bio-accumulation. The culture regresses as they have almost no metal and the core of remaining scientists keeps trying to use fusion to make metals with no luck. Then at the end someone figures out bacteria can collect metals and they can get back to a thriving culture. It may of been a trilogy. Oh! Another good video Asinometry. You are so worth the patreon to me.

@erincarson8998 10 ай бұрын

The Dark Beyond the Stars The Tripods The Remnants

@honor9lite1337 10 ай бұрын

@@erincarson8998👍🏻

@contretemps3001 10 ай бұрын

thank you for being such a good source of information and having such a nice voice!!

@Muonium1 9 ай бұрын

Small correction at 8:00 - europium isn't used for blue light from LEDs; famously, Shuji's InGaN LEDs natively produce bright blue light of course. Europium phosphors typically produce RED light and were used in practically all fluorescent lights and CRT displays for the red component for decades. I think they do have an extremely niche use in some high CRI LEDs that use it instead of cerium based broadband phosphor to produce red, but it's relatively inefficient and I'd guess is probably being supplanted by quantum dot based phosphors anyway.

@csours 10 ай бұрын

This is one of the coolest future techs! I'm also super interested in augmenting living systems with electricity - solar panels are many multiples more efficient than plants at collecting energy from sunlight, but living systems are genius at building atomic scale structures. What if we can use electricity to grow tiny workers for all kinds of things? Like what if we could make bacterial or fungal colonies that make graphene straight from atmospheric CO2?

@alexandermiller6583 9 ай бұрын

Such an interesting video. I recently did research on lithium extraction as well, Tesla had a patent on using a new mechano-chemistry process that mines lithium from clay deposits. Perhaps something similar can be done for REEs. We have to do something to reduce destruction of the environment in pursuit of these metals

@dyingearth 10 ай бұрын

Rare Earth aren't that rare. It all depends on how much you care about polluting the area around the refinery. China doesn't care, and here we are.

@dannyzero692 10 ай бұрын

Even if they did enforce laws to protect the environment someone will break it because much like everyone else, the Chinese loves money.

@testboga5991 10 ай бұрын

Not necessarily. If the price is right, it can be processed in a clean way.

@Dani-Nani 10 ай бұрын

Well, they are rare, in the sense of low concentration around the globe, even if they aren't that uncommon to find on earth's crust. Gold ore deposits have by far higher concentrations yet many of the rare earths have waaay more pressence in our crust than gold does. So yeah, rare earths arent that rare, yet they are hard to get a good amount of them in a relative small amount of ore volumme processed

@kolbyking2315 10 ай бұрын

Not rare. Rarely concentrated.

@done-damned 10 ай бұрын

Europe and the US dont care either and will happily buy any rare earths they can get their hands on. Stop the exports from China and everyone will be building nasty refineries all around the world in no time.

@michaelperrone3867 10 ай бұрын

If we could produce scandium from coal fly ash, the demand would probably go up- it's an extremely useful element and the only reason it isn't utilized more often is due to scarcity. Also E-waste recycling for REEs could be improved by this bacteria approach

@100c0c 9 ай бұрын

What would scandium be used for?

@michaelperrone3867 9 ай бұрын

stronger aluminum alloys, catalysts, thermionic emitters, LEDs and semiconductors, et cetera@@100c0c

@MagnumInnominandum 10 ай бұрын

The mycelium of many fungal species concentrate heavy metals including Plutonium, Neptunium, Uranium.

@heinerwutz3624 9 ай бұрын

I love your videos, and usually I learn a lot about a topic where I have no clue about. Well this time I actually know a bit about the topic. I am a microbiologist and I did my PhD on bacteria that occur in hydrothermal systems. These bugs actually use REE as cofactor in one of their enzymes. If you are interested look into the "xoxF" methanol dehydrogenases.

@prophetofarrakis1760 9 ай бұрын

Thank, for this video. Always been my mad scientist idea to cultivate a bacteria to assist in the breaking down of plastic polymers. Or as a way to convert nitrogens from farm runoffs back into reusable nitrates without poisoning the waterways. Glad to see others with the right skills are way ahead of me. And thanks tor introducing me to this field.

@christopherleubner6633 10 ай бұрын

Grab samples of bacteria from those waste ponds and you are bound to find something that will concentrate desirable metals. Also the bacteria in geothermal pools might be good.

@NirvanaFan5000 10 ай бұрын

recycling them from old electronics seems like a double win: we get minerals from china and we reduce e-waste. if we can do it more eco-friendly, then even better. (and we should have a tax that requires people to pay the cost of recycling and waste management, either at the produce or consumer level.)

@emca1597 10 ай бұрын

Good idea but making it a reality would be very difficult, if it were to become a law, it'd have to go through politicians who don't give a damn about the environment.

@Redmanticore 9 ай бұрын

in usa oil business gets yearly 700 billion in subsidies (reuters news 2023) guess how much usa cares about environment. you can try, all I'm saying dont have too high hopes. (U.S. fossil fuel subsidies stretch across the U.S. tax code, which makes detailing their costs complex. The IMF estimates they stood at $760 billion in 2022, a figure topped only by China. 23.11.2023)

@KevinLyda 9 ай бұрын

I feel like there's a longer video with you, Nile Red and Claire Saffitz. NR and CS identify various yeasts to remove rare earth elements and then NR extracts them in various reactions while CS makes various baked goods from the yeast and you describe the various commercial histories that NR/CS are touching on - possibly touch on both of them when discussing stand mixers for instance.

@Critter145 10 ай бұрын

I’d be more interested to know if the elements would self separate, to high purities, if you vaporized a sample under vacuum and applied enough voltage to make a plasma.

@thekinginyellow1744 10 ай бұрын

Almost certainly not economically, as the concentrations are way to low in the base ore.

@Critter145 10 ай бұрын

@@thekinginyellow1744 🤷‍♂️

@RonJohn63 10 ай бұрын

6:04 "If he dies, he dies."

@christopherd.winnan8701 10 ай бұрын

Have you considered the use of dynamic bio accumulators in permaculture set ups? This is also quite a popular area of study. I recall lavender being a useful crop in old copper mines for example.

@AerialWaviator 9 ай бұрын

Excellent topic! Using bacteria this way is very fascinating. Already there are experiments in space looking at how some chemicals and medicines interact with cells in zero-g to better understand the interactions at cell membrane level. Expect we'll soon be seeing experiments with bacteria and rare earths in zero-g. (absence of gravity removes many variables, so easy to study the critical interactions)

@tatagata6268 10 ай бұрын

thx for the information, i always wondered why the fuss about rare earths, after all they are not that rare in the earths crust. Title of the video could be: Dangers to the environment by green energy.

@jaymacpherson8167 9 ай бұрын

Yes, bacteria can be used in the separation process. The process will involve others separation methods. We have yet to train these fellow travelers to hand us a neat end product.

@AnarchoCatBoyEthan 9 ай бұрын

very interesting, i appreciate you always putting out such high quality interesting videos.

@MultiZirkon 9 ай бұрын

Thanks!

@siberx4 9 ай бұрын

5:17 That's a very surprised-looking bacteria

@Griffin12536 10 ай бұрын

There’s a high pitch ring in your audio track at 0:00. If I’m not going crazy.

@geofffoster6302 9 ай бұрын

Isolate the genes for a metallothionene or phytochelatin protein (easy). Modify to fit specific rare earths (hard) Express/brew in a yeast or ecoli. (Easy)

@Amejonah 10 ай бұрын

6:03 "serious ethical questions about killing bacteria for capitalist profit" da hell...

@LukeBunyip 10 ай бұрын

There's a joke involving PETA that would sit well here...

@neilrichardson7454 10 ай бұрын

@@LukeBunyip😊I'm sure when PETA members and staff get sick, they seek medicine to kill any pathogens that ails them 😊

@4k-os 10 ай бұрын

Bless the life given for this body

@OdyTypeR 10 ай бұрын

@@LukeBunyip a joke about the People for the Eating of Tasty Animals? Oh wait, you must mean the: People for the Ethical Treatment of Amoebae

@2Loto 10 ай бұрын

Really not recognizing the sarcasm? Da fuck....

@AKA-f7p 10 ай бұрын

Using bacteria is the same as sewage treatment, but with different bacteria.

@kerotan3582 10 ай бұрын

Wild to see a plot point in Metal Gear Solid V suddenly be show to be a serious method for material refinement!

@Lorendrawn 10 ай бұрын

Hope we can get bacteria that -with the addition of a catalyst- eat plastic and turn it into drinkable water or smth

@RonnieMcNutt666 9 ай бұрын

there are some deep sea dwelling bacteria which somehow generate copper through transmutation, also even stranger is this process is directly tied to dopamine and energy status (same thing basically), its incredibly interesting

@MannyEspinola-q4t 10 ай бұрын

Thank you for this video

@averystablegenius 9 ай бұрын

Asianometry, would you consider making a video on the architecture of physical Qubits with animations of how they actually work?

@adhip0574 10 ай бұрын

I wonder if this could be used in Thorium refinement for next-generation reactors...

@hello-rq8kf 9 ай бұрын

would be cool but unfortuately even reactive REEs are far less toxic than eating alpha particle emitters

@happygarlic13 9 ай бұрын

Most creative way to tell user to smash like I've heard in years ^^, At 04:30 + Would like a double like button

@davesprivatelounge 10 ай бұрын

It's all fun and games till the bacteria evolve to start eating concrete and make termites look like a joke

@frankstrawnation 8 ай бұрын

We already have bacteria that eat plastics. So it wouldn't be a surprise to see some bacteria that are able to eat concrete.

@ciprianpopa1503 10 ай бұрын

The conclusion is a bit skewed. The issue to the rest of the world is not related to how we separate REE, but where to get them all together. One of the main issues is that most REE deposits are also concentrates of Thorium and sometimes U. Go figure the scandalous nature of having a mine like this next to a populated place. An issue that China doesn't really have, since Chinese miners and mine neighbors are treated as consumables. That's why one of the western world saviors is Sweden's new REE mine next to Kiruna iron deposit, which is almost desert like area, so then can extract it in the good old fashion way, regardless of the other heavy metals. Acid usage itself is a scare mongering part next to a mutant E. coli that could really bust a full community down stream, at national scale, if not contained properly, which is always the case in mining. One can buffer an acid pool just by throwing some alkaline solution in the pond. It isn't done yet since it costs money... Bio stuff is the new hype in the mining, mining that was always kept low of finance, just to keep the raw materials as low priced as possible. Go figure they will use high "new tech", which is 70 years old at least tech, when they want to save every penny. There's nothing better and cheaper than the old fashioned HCl, found in everybody's stomach.

@100c0c 9 ай бұрын

So the bacteria won't change anything?

@ciprianpopa1503 9 ай бұрын

@@100c0c he says it clearly here. Most of the bacteria die in those conditions of high concentration, thus those ethical jokes. The bacteria may achieve some concentration effect, but one has to extract them from the concentrated solution just before they die. Who has the time and money to tickle some bacteria, when we need those ree yesterday?

@ciprianpopa1503 9 ай бұрын

@@100c0c p.s this is on the same level of hype as the fission promise.

@HighWealder 10 ай бұрын

I'm wondering about the ash from my woodstove as feedstock?

@ashmoleproductions5407 9 ай бұрын

Most biomining initiatives are focused on copper or gold. But its good that you are starting to discover this field.

@YouCountSheep 9 ай бұрын

Its not a new idea, but certainly interesting for these higher valued elements. Its kinda funny that we are going back to pig iron days getting metal from bacteria to now trying to get rare earth metals from these tiny buggers.

@黄蟮 9 ай бұрын

Bro, have you ever made oxytocin? I'm very curious about this. How is it extracted from the ergot fungus? I really want to extract it myself. Can you teach me?

@matsv201 10 ай бұрын

I would say the claim that the process is dirty is sort of... lets say misleading. Its not the process its self that is dirty, but the way it is handled. For example, as late as in the 90s paper production was super dirty. But one after a other the process got cleaner and cleaner and to day paper production is basically a closed system. This also saves chemicals and hence money. While the process is expensive to set up, when it set up its actually quite cheap to operate. In less than 20 years we went from Paper mills being the most energy demanding industry to actually producing net energy. For rare earth metals its a similar fashion. The main diffrance is that the electricity that is used, is really hard to cut down on, and hence china using coal power with out paying CO2 fee have a huge advantage.

@glennac 10 ай бұрын

I think we have all been trolled by Jon into watching what we thought were technology videos when, in fact, we have all been lured to an ASMR channel featuring his soothing voice. 😂

@AndrewMellor-darkphoton 10 ай бұрын

I'm pretty sure I've unconsciously killed trillions of bacteria so I don't know if their life's matter. That last part looked like the fluidized sand bed or the sumps swift air and disk of aquariums.

@tommos1 10 ай бұрын

If anything these technologies will probably be implemented in China first if they are found to be viable. They have the industrial base, expertise and most importantly the political will to implement it.

@martinmalecki3302 10 ай бұрын

4:43 understood

@omgautubeacount 9 ай бұрын

whay can't they use food grown with chinese fertilizer as feed for the bacteria?

@causewaykayak 10 ай бұрын

4:54 sewage runoff from mines ? Seriously ? How much sewage is involved in mining ? Should this read something like "metal leachate from mine waste" ?

@hello-rq8kf 9 ай бұрын

sewage is a colloquial term for wastewater of any source

@causewaykayak 9 ай бұрын

@@hello-rq8kf I'm a surfer as well as a sea kayaker. SAS - Surfers against Sewage - have definite views on this. 'Colloquial' may be your personal take but it goes nowhere in court.

@brunoperezortega1961 10 ай бұрын

11:07

@juliuszkocinski7478 10 ай бұрын

Primitive Technology kinda taught me that bacteria can be viable source of elements. And I think not only me

@matthiasknutzen6061 9 ай бұрын

6:04 cant tell if serious or joke 🤣

@stevebabiak6997 10 ай бұрын

Living organisms: “Take that, AI!”

@Privacityuser 10 ай бұрын

It's about TONICITY not only membranes!

@GeneralThargor 5 ай бұрын

I smashed that like button like a chickens head.

@WhyWhatWhoWhenWhyAgain 10 ай бұрын

Great video, I can see this industry booming in the near future, not because of China's hold on the rare earths market, but because we are learning (all be it slowly) that nature has had 4+ billion years to solve problems that we are only just starting to address. It sounds like a winner to me. ❤

@WhyWhatWhoWhenWhyAgain 9 ай бұрын

@@music_lyrics4141 horses can go through bush and will tell you if a cougar is stalking you. I hope you are joking about nature not making Teslas.

@goldnutter412 10 ай бұрын

Another important one, done well. Clap

@Paul-A01 10 ай бұрын

Now we just need to get the bacteria to enrich uranium for us!

@rokasbarasa1 10 ай бұрын

Very good topic. Neve thought about this

@-gg8342 10 ай бұрын

I Love this concept!!!!

@Fragmentofbone 10 ай бұрын

There are plants (Eucalyptus) that can do that too.

@Kenneth_James 10 ай бұрын

You can draw cute fungi too, sir

@_mameluco 10 ай бұрын

Aye let’s go INL reference!!

@raphaelambrosiuscosteau829 9 ай бұрын

It was a joke in the video, but do we really have "people" who would raise a question of ethics about killing a freaking bacteria and industries would need to unironically argue about it in some court of law? Is this really where we at?