For those who are confused: #1 Hyperaccumulators are plants that naturally take up an inordinate amount of certain metals (nickel, zinc, cadmium, lead, cobalt, etc). These plants can be grown on land that can't be used to grow other crops. The hyperaccumulator plant isn't fit for eating because it stores large (toxic) amounts of metals in its leaves. One notable hyperaccumulator is _Pycnandra acuminata._ Its has green latex because of the high amount of nickel in the tree. #2 The scientists aren't saying this tech would replace mining. They are saying it could be used in conjunction with mining - either to use the plants in places that have been contaminated by mining operations or in peripheral areas around the mine where metal levels are still high, but not high enough to warrant digging up. #3 Burning the plant biomass does create some CO2 emissions, but much less than mining for metals so it is still an environmentally friendly practice. #4 Because hyperaccumulators remove harmful heavy metals from the soil, in time they actually can actually help the land become safe for growing food plants again. The last point is how I became familiar with this practice. Plants are grown on toxic soil to clean them up for food use again. It's called phytoremediation and has proved successful in several trials at this point.
Actually, the plants accumulate sun energy an atmosphere CO2 to extract the metals The carbon sequestration preceeds it's release on energy production and minerals recovery So it may even be carbon negative It's a win win win
↑ all the misanthropic comments have been because the video was not nearly as clear as your stellar 4-point comment X-) Bloomberg should hire you and pay you 2x whoever they have currently!
@@r.guerreiro140 produces positive net carbon emissions, unfortunately, like most farming around the world does ...no amount of wishful thinking changes that :-/
@@TristanMorrow Come on here to see real farming by your own eyes Our biggest concern is to keep and improve our soil fertility, what's directly proportional to the Organic Matter ratio That's why we spend money in crops which will not be harvested, but let down on the field to improve the MO ratio and feed the pedobiota Once legal issues are resolved, we will provide the world not only food, but carbon credits as well in amounts as vast as the first By the way, we already feed 1,2 to 1,4 billion people worldwide, about six times our own population You seems to be a wise person, so, please forget the defamation campaign the global media is raging against us, Brazilian farmers, and go after primary sources I suggest you two items to start: 1. Plantio direto no Brasil 2. Culturas de cobertura
Engineer watching video: 1. How many squared kilometers of arable land is needed to yield 1t of Nickel per year / month / day? 2. Plants need to get Nickel from somewhere. How many cycles same soil can sustain before yield drops below economic threshold?
Maybe we can try some back of the envelope calculations. Best case is a plant that’s 4% nickel in weight. Information on nickel content of soil can be found on the net. I would be interested to see a calculation that somewhat answers your questions. We could add assumptions, like so many harvests a year, how deep the roots grow etc. In any case, looking at those mines, I’m sure the plants will never be able to get nickel from those depths.
My thoughts exactly... also it's basically mining about 30cm into the earth..... this is negligible... waited all this video to get a single statement about this issue but nothing
They grow Thlaspi caerulescens which mature every year. They are only growing it on soil with high zinc concentration, so I would assume they only grow a few times before abandoning the field.
I think that’s why they said at the end this will only be a supplement to extract a bit extra nickel from soils that aren’t worth traditional extraction
for more expensive metal like gold and platinum, there are already existing bio-mining technique that utilize genetic engineered bacteria to leach out metal from ultra low concentration ore. It able to extract like 99.5% remaining from the low grade ore cheaply. But it does take several weeks for the extraction process to completed. I think this type of bio-minig via plant is quite similar. Most likely it will serves as a method to extract metal from ore that has too low of concentration to be processed normally. And existed along side with regular method. It won't replace the regular method, but serve to recycle waste ore to get more metal out of it.
I study plant and soil science. I have never heard of agromining before it seems to be ecological sound. This was an interesting and insightful video on agromining.
Arguably, the use of floating water plants is more useful and more economic. At least two (probably more) water plants can concentrate a range of metals 5 orders of magnitude from the water they grow in. They are Azola and Water Hyacinths. If you then dry the plants you gain another order of magnitude and if you ash the dry plant, one more OoM. The heat from burning the dry plants could be used for heating or electricity generation,,,, and of course for drying more plants. If the plants are grown in nutrient rich water (from a sewage plant??) they multiply at a fantastic rate and you just have to continually harvest (scoop off the surface) at a rate that allows maximum growth rate or maximum metal harvest. They can be used in, for instance, the water leaking out of a mine waste dump, thus cleaning up the water for other uses while harvesting metals that were not extracted originally. The only place I can see for land based plants is to clean up a contaminated sight. Water plants are far more easily industrialized.
Indonesia produces and posses the largest nickel reserve in the world. We stop exporting raw nickel to Europe and they accuse us of trade infringement and environmental pollution. Yet they actually want our nickel for their cheap steel and alumunium
Ah... Indonesia kan sudah pernah keluar PBB, keluar WTO juga nggak masalah... Sebenarnya sih, negara2 maju itu yang merusak alam... Kita hidup tanpa teknologi jaman sekarang juga masih bisa-bisa saja...
Yeah. the "developed" world does the same to South Africa. The majority of South Africa's electricity is produced using coal. About 15% of our electricity is used for mining, by companies that aren't even South African owned. And when the demand for electricity gets too high we sit in the dark. But they won't help us in any meaningful way to grow our renewable energy production. And if you say "nationalize the mines" the capitalists act as if we said something about their mamas. And all of this while paying entry-level miners less than $500 a month, and only providing safe working conditions after a lot of pressure from the unions and a little massacre when the miners engaged in a strike (Look up Marikana for context).
I wonder if it would be best to only harvest the leaves and the seeds and let the plants grow to big trees so they can produce bigger root systems and more branches, leaves and seeds to extract more and more metals from the earth.
I've worked in the mining industry for a long time now. It astounds me how people don't understand how mining touches your daily lives every single day of your lives. It's dumbfounding. Every article of steel near you, any product produced on a metal machine was directly touched by that industry. Yet, never noticed for how important it actually is. I'll never understand it.
Great idea! I would like to know if this technique can be used for extracting remaining metals from mining waste. I know, mining waste is closer to rock than soil and the toxicity levels are way higher, but maybe it could be ground and mixed with normal soil, then treated with hyperaccumulator plants.
That wa my first thought to but mixing in other waste like the ash and sludge from sewage and landfill incinerators might give you enough carbon and soil remediation. That stuff also often has alot of metals and stuff in it. I used to work for a railroad and we shipped alot of trash like that mostly from around NYC to the south it was gross in more than a physical sense
Not really misleading. If one watches the video, the researchers even admit it won't replace traditional mining, but is a supplemental method. Also, these plants needn't be used only for soil remediation. It is mentioned in the video because it's a nice bonus to the work of extracting nickel.
If I remember correctly... I have read an article 5 - 10 years ago, a group of researchers used sunflower plants to clean up radioactive field or heavy metal soil. Wonder if they are the same group of researchers. Change it in the form that more easily to handle... One step at a time. Great idea!
we are defending our Ciudad Juarez from mining and i had exactly that question, how do we get rid off mining by sustainable methods. THank you for the info, it opens my mind to new processes
There is a major flaw in this, they burn the leaves which creates huge CO2 and CH4 release. They are accounting emissions to convert plant into ash as negligible. But it is not negligible. Like Air resistance which is not negligible.
Except that the heat produced by the boiler is used in replacement of fossil fuel and heats a Research building. Unfortunately it is not stated in the video. CO2 emitted (oxidation so no CH4 measured) is the same as fixed by the crop during the same year.
We need plants for the bottom of lakes many lakes around here have crazy levels of toxic metals that no one wants to clean up because it may do more damage.
Using plant beds to remove metal and clean extraction products from mine effluent would increase yields and efficiency, particularly of rare earth metals. Then planting Equisetum and phytomining plants would recover any remaining rare earths to a depth of 50m.
Ah! Is there a lead-accumulating plant? This sort of thing could also be used after a mine is abandoned, both to get the last bit of metal out of the tailings, and to clean up the soil for after-mining use.
1: only possible for surface extraction of metals. 2: it will take a long time for plants to grow. 3: unless it is used for mineral extraction from waste materials, this is practically useless.
I wonder if these plants could be used to clean up the Berkeley pit. I know we spend a lot of time and money making sure it doesn’t get worse, I wish we could do something to make it better
The plants may be able to take up metals, but I would think only in the soil that their roots actually reach. I have yet to see a mine that is only a few feet deep at most. This is interesting but not any sort of replacement to mining.
Just have to add that mining for metal creates alot of "waste" however there are alot of byproducts. Its not simply digging a massive hole in the ground and then throwing out everything that isn't metal. Woodlands need to be cleared via a logging contractor which produces lumbar and other product. Top soil need to be analyzed and hauled away. Clay is used in construction, sand is used in construction, stones of all sizes and types are hauled away for any number of uses such as gravel. The material waste comes from removing the metal ore.
In agriculture term, these are called trace minerals. To obtain these in trace quantity and compete with mining industry would be very hard. But you guys doing a good job.. all the very best..
I think this is a wonderful idea and if they can help the plants take up higher concentrations it could have a great benefit for waste reduction and improvement of natural ecosystems. I know I have been doing all I can to help the area around my parents house. Trying to learn how the system around me works to find ways to help it do its own processes and finding ways to do the things I need, so it doesn't mess up those systems and perhaps helps make it easier for me with my medical issues.
Could these plants be used as a cover crop to reduce the heavy metals in crops grown with them? Remove the biomass from the field and over a few season perhaps have reduced the heavy metal levels to the point it is no longer necessary to repeat this process?
I'm not entirely sure if this is what you're talking about, but they have used specific sunflower varieties to help clean up the soil around Chernobyl. Planting them, harvesting them when grown, incinerating them and then vitrifying the remains into a glass to be stored safely. The process is called phytoremediation, I find it so fascinating.
Im in the Philippines I'm very much afraid that most mining projects laid in the current admin in my country are being push through... Some tribal leaders are also being targeted for not supporting the said projects
so there is this thing we call entrophy... this is less eficient in so may ways, that what realy impress is that now we have options for when the mines come exausted... But cheap fusion energi solves best, because of soil ocupation questions
There is new battery teck,that does not require cobalt or zink,like all problematic pollution it is demand that drives the pollution,and as the newest extremely efficient batteries not requiring these elements, demand will be driven down
Is this even worth it based on how little metals it can produce & HOW MUCH WATER IT WOULD TAKE? We are losing fresh drinking water to pollution, farming/ranching, etc...
I've got a question: In the film they show mines going tens of meters underground to get to the stuff they're extracting. Can the hyper collector plants' roots really reach that deep to do the same?
The Shepard's Tree has the deepest roots at 70 m. I'd imagine that most of these plants have much smaller roots and that's probably a variable that is being looked at.
First, you want to obtain a DNA. Then, you can mess with the nutrients. These individual processes are definitely what you understand more deeply than conventional processes that a lot of people have talked against. I definitely love the idea of mining for these metals at home.
Another typical pice of client journalism by Bloomberg. Keep selling advertising as journalism. Also the Singlish by Bloomberg’s Singapore unit is bleeding through.
Nope; Recycling batteries and alternative battery chemistry and hydrogen are better solutions. Until we develop vastly better rocket technology(lower emissions, higher payloads) asteroid mining won’t take off.
@@khanch.6807 twenty years is very hopeful lol. I’ll say 50 realistically. We are nowhere near discovering fuel that can sustain a space craft long enough for asteroid mining. The most promising thing we have is plasma propulsion and there’s still lots of work to be done in that field. Then we would have to think about food, water and oxygen for the miners.
@@kodonashinka8680 No we do have the tech. We just need to bring an asteroid into lunar orbit using tethering and mine using autonomous drones from there. We could even softly crash the astroid on the moon and mine it there and ship them back to Earth. No human labour in space as it's very unprofitable to do so. Us meat sacks can't do anything in space without expensive life support systems. AI is your best labour in space.
I am so excited for this technology. I hope that they get the endorsement necessary to upscale to clean up a lot of contaminated abandoned mines and turn them into crops, it's such an elegant and beautiful idea. Also I hope they start fcking with those scientists that are creating living organism that didn't exist through DNA coding and printing, so that they can create new varities of plant for whatever metal is needed. cleaning abandoned mines with plants that absorb metal, that's solar punk AF
Seems too intensive in cost and effort. Like having to still dissolve it in acid, dilute the acid, concentrate the metal. All of this after farming, when we’re facing a future where both farm land scarcity and water scarcity are a looming threat
Best use for this imho is soil remediation for former mines. The land can be made arable again while at the same time gettingthe remaining metals. I don't think this can replace commercial mining.
