Teenager Invents Faster Way to Clean Up Toxic Tar Sands Waste Using Sand and Bacteria

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.care2.com/causes/teenager-invents-faster-way-to-clean-up-toxic-tar-sands-waste-using-sand-and-bacteria.html




by TreeHugger September 30, 2014 9:00 am (This post originally appeared on TreeHugger.)

Written by Megan Treacy

An 18-year-old from Canada has invented a way to clean up the toxic waste produced from extracting oil from tar sands. Hayley Todesco used knowledge gained from fifth grade science to come up with a filtration system using sand and bacteria to quickly break down the waste.

This waste is usually stored in tailings ponds, where it will take centuries to break down. In 2010, tailings ponds took up about 68 square miles (176 square kilometers), but by 2020 that area is expected to grow to 96.5 square miles (250 square kilometers), all full of toxic waste.

Todesco remembered a sand filter that her class had made in fifth grade that completely cleaned muddy water that was poured over it. She combined that knowledge with an interest she had in biology and bioreactors that use bacteria to break down waste. She figured combining sand and bacteria would make a device that was far more effective.

With help from University of Calgary professor Lisa Gieg who let her work in her lab, Todesco began a seven month process to create a filter device that could break down naphthenic acid, a major toxic component of the oil sands tailings. She cobbled together a system that used aquarium sand, empty IV bags, and other materials she picked up at hardware and dollar stores. The finished product uses gravity to pull oil sands waste through IV bags filled with sand topped with a film of bacteria.

FULL story at link.

[Phlem]

1. This gives me hope that our children will save us,

and will be different. I can't wait till the age of greed recedes.

[Monk06]

2. I hope she gets a piece of the patent but that probably goes to the UofC

[freshwest]

3. There was a similar technology employed in the Gulf in years past. I talked to the company that made

that work on oil spills. It turned the oil and toxics into a compound that healed the ecosystem. There is always a solution, the best ones come from nature.

[caraher]

4. Great for her, but I have mixed feelings

Effective ways to clean the waste can only help a practice that should not happen spread. We need to leave the oil in the soil and the trees on the land, not find ways to make the devastation following resource extraction less toxic. In an ideal world this kind of invention would be used only on existing wastes, and it is certainly needed for that. But if this scales up and goes into use, the net effect will be to make tar sand production more palatable, to the detriment of both climate and the lands disturbed.