Can We Use Bacteria to Refine Rare Earths?

Рет қаралды 60,773

2 ай бұрын

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Пікірлер: 191

@the-quintessenz 2 ай бұрын

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

@smbatman123 2 ай бұрын

It’s about being green

@Sniperboy5551 2 ай бұрын

As a nicotine addict, I agree

@ERBEpic 2 ай бұрын

@@smbatman123humans are the most green animals on the planet

@WhereisMelania 2 ай бұрын

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

@0neIntangible 2 ай бұрын

Cough, cough...

@Xylos144 2 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 2 ай бұрын

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

@obsidianjane4413 2 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 2 ай бұрын

@@FutureBoyWonder then elaborate 😅

@RonJohn63 2 ай бұрын

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

@bobweiram6321 2 ай бұрын

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

@ashmoleproductions5407 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

@schmitzbeats6102 2 ай бұрын

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

@CaptainManic2010 2 ай бұрын

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

@PplsChampion 2 ай бұрын

4:45 you got me, it worked

@bravosierra2447 2 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 2 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 2 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!!

@timwildauer5063 2 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 2 ай бұрын

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

@danheidel 2 ай бұрын

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

@christopherleubner6633 2 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.

@davesprivatelounge 2 ай бұрын

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

@frankstrawnation 9 күн 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.

@samw5767 2 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.

@BurleyBoar 2 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 2 ай бұрын

The Dark Beyond the Stars The Tripods The Remnants

@honor9lite1337 2 ай бұрын

@@erincarson8998👍🏻

@contretemps3001 2 ай бұрын

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

@crow2989 2 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

@MagnumInnominandum 2 ай бұрын

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

@AnarchoCatBoyEthan Ай бұрын

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

@michaelperrone3867 2 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 Ай бұрын

What would scandium be used for?

@michaelperrone3867 Ай бұрын

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

@heinerwutz3624 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.

@alexandermiller6583 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

@csours 2 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?

@user-pz2lt7ox1r 2 ай бұрын

Thank you for this video

@prophetofarrakis1760 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.

@tatagata6268 2 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.

@dyingearth 2 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 2 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 2 ай бұрын

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

@Dani-Nani 2 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 2 ай бұрын

Not rare. Rarely concentrated.

@done-damned 2 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.

@RonJohn63 2 ай бұрын

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

@jaymacpherson8167 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.

@christopherd.winnan8701 2 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 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)

@-gg8342 2 ай бұрын

I Love this concept!!!!

@happygarlic13 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

@rokasbarasa1 2 ай бұрын

Very good topic. Neve thought about this

@Amejonah 2 ай бұрын

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

@LukeBunyip 2 ай бұрын

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

@neilrichardson7454 2 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 2 ай бұрын

Bless the life given for this body

@OdyTypeR 2 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 2 ай бұрын

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

@KevinLyda 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.

@ciprianpopa1503 2 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 Ай бұрын

So the bacteria won't change anything?

@ciprianpopa1503 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 Ай бұрын

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

@user-tr4oz9cj6p 2 ай бұрын

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

@Muonium1 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.

@averystablegenius Ай бұрын

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

@NirvanaFan5000 2 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 2 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 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)

@kerotan3582 2 ай бұрын

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

@martinmalecki3302 2 ай бұрын

4:43 understood

@MultiZirkon Ай бұрын

Thanks!

@geofffoster6302 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)

@ashmoleproductions5407 Ай бұрын

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

@siberx4 Ай бұрын

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

@glennac 2 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. 😂

@Lorendrawn 2 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 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

@alexhubble 2 ай бұрын

Double fascinating.

@Critter145 2 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 2 ай бұрын

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

@Critter145 2 ай бұрын

@@thekinginyellow1744 🤷‍♂️

@YouCountSheep 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.

@HighWealder 2 ай бұрын

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

@goldnutter412 Ай бұрын

Another important one, done well. Clap

@Griffin12536 2 ай бұрын

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

@adhip0574 2 ай бұрын

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

@hello-rq8kf Ай бұрын

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

@cdkey4389 2 ай бұрын

Aye let’s go INL reference!!

@tommos1 2 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.

@matthiasknutzen6061 Ай бұрын

6:04 cant tell if serious or joke 🤣

@WhyWhatWhoWhenWhyAgain 2 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 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.

@user-in8bz3kd7d 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?

@juliuszkocinski7478 2 ай бұрын

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

@matsv201 2 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.

@stevebabiak6997 2 ай бұрын

Living organisms: “Take that, AI!”

@Privacityuser 2 ай бұрын

It's about TONICITY not only membranes!

@Paul-A01 2 ай бұрын

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

@AndrewMellor-darkphoton 2 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.

@SammyGDude 2 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.

@omgautubeacount Ай бұрын

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

@Kenneth_James 2 ай бұрын

You can draw cute fungi too, sir

@Fragmentofbone 2 ай бұрын

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

@raphaelambrosiuscosteau829 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?

@brunoperezortega1961 2 ай бұрын

11:07

@1verstapp 2 ай бұрын

''needs more research.'' but doesn't everything? but looking promising...

@causewaykayak 2 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 Ай бұрын

sewage is a colloquial term for wastewater of any source

@causewaykayak 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.