Cleaning Land for Wealth

This project addresses the challenge of treating contaminated land to recover materials for future use and economic gain. All existing work on land remediation is energy and/or resource intensive and focuses on sequestering contaminants with no attempt to recover them as a resource. Currently there are few genuine economic drivers to motivate decontamination and land recovery even though many sites contain substantial amounts of valuable minerals. The resource costs for land treatment are prohibitive for dilute and dispersed sites. Recent estimates suggest that there are approximately 300,000 hectares of land in the UK affected to some extent by industrial or natural contamination. In Western Europe 350,000 contaminated sites with an estimated treatment cost of 350bn euros have been identified. Globally, substantial land contamination exists though this is poorly quantified.

This project will deliver bio-manufactured, functionalised, Nano-particles and other high value products from contaminated land. We will utilise the ability of plants to preferentially take metals out of the ground in significant quantities (hyperaccumulate). We will then recover those metals via a combination of synthetic biology and process engineering and develop "bio-factories" that turn those metals into metallic nanoparticles via bacteria. During the recovery process we will also utilise microbes to break the lignocellulose parts of the crops into valuable materials like DHA, Vanillin and other chemical or polymer feedstocks.

As part of the bio-factory process, we will functionalise the nanoparticles so that they have industrial significance and hence maximise their value. We have selected two common polluting targets - arsenic (As) and platinum group metals (PGM) - which are generated by industrial processes and pollute large amounts of land and water courses which endanger health, preventing human habitation or other forms of exploitation. As nanoparticles are used to treat aggressive cancers and PGM nanoparticles are used in a wide range of applications such as catalysis, fuel cells and batteries. We also expect to develop new opportunities for these and similar materials as the research progresses.

This project will address the important challenge of remediating contaminated land to recover materials for future use and economic gain.

Industrial Impact: Manufacturing will benefit from new feedstocks for existing applications and potentially new products. The proposed low energy process has the potential for disruptive innovation in the land remediation sector suffering incremental change with limited financial return or social benefit.

Public and Social Impact: Globally, contaminated land blights the lives of millions with limited financial motivation for this to be addressed: this proposal offers a unique driver for economic land transformation. Contaminated land represents a significant loss of land and chronic polluting potential for communities throughout the world. The successful application of the technology outlined in this proposal would lead to health benefits by reducing the exposure of people to high concentrations of toxic metals. It would enable treated land to be used for agriculture or urbanization, without risk of illness, creating employment that would lead to personal and societal benefits and possibly lead to a profound shift in world dynamics. In addition, the resource efficiency KTN estimates that world wide mining activities are responsible for 5% of global carbon dioxide emissions, consume limited fossil fuel resources and produce other damaging 'greenhouse gases', recovery of metals would reduce the burden on mining and its environmental impact.

Economic Impact: The potential cost of clean-up for Western Europe is estimated to cost 350B EUR across 350,000 sites. Land recovery will lead to benefits for the most needy in society, by creating employment and reducing healthcare needs, which in turn leads to economic benefits at a national and international level. EPSRC, TSB, and BBSRC have programmes in the wider arena yet none have addressed the economic recovery of materials: we regard this as a motivating rationale for establishing such a resource management process. In addition, the development of new process routes for the production of lower cost and/or higher performance chemicals and metal nanoparticles may contribute towards wealth generation in a number of possible sectors.

Policy Makers: Impact on policymakers on future technology options in: contaminated land remediation (e.g. DEFRA); eco- friendly / economic production routes for chemical / polymer feedstocks and nano-materials (BIS and DEFRA); advancing biotechnology/synthetic biology in the public interest and in the development of a range of high-value products that incorporate nano-materials (BIS, DH and DECC)