'Metal-Eating' Plant Capable of Absorbing 18,000 PPM of Nickel | Hacker News Reader

'Metal-Eating' Plant Capable of Absorbing 18,000 PPM of Nickel

autoworldnews.com

36 pointsjmadsen15 comments

What is not really pointed out is that you can't just plant these on polluted ground and have it magically cleaned up. You have to periodically harvest the plants, otherwise when they die they'll decompose and the metals go back into the soil.

The harvested plant material would then essentially be toxic waste which will have to be specially landfilled, or if valuable, processed to extract the raw metals absorbed.

Also not sure how deep their roots go but probably only a few inches of topsoil could be cleaned up in this way.

From the article:

"Once the plant absorbs a significant amount of metal, they can also be harvested for their commercially valuable contents, according to the release."

"nickel, zinc, copper and manganese in high concentrations" are all commercially viable metals worth collecting, assuming the extraction process is cheaper than digging it out of the ground.

I haven't been able to find out how long the roots are, or how deep they typically grow

Considering the family (Violaceae), I'd guess pretty shallow (<30cm).

Wonder if this is a step towards Freeman Dyson's carbon-dense tree that solves the carbon emissions issue.

I wonder how this plant compares to Sebertia acuminata from New Caledonia: http://books.google.com/books?id=BCQ49kJG8hgC&lpg=PA46&ots=N...

fascinating! thanks for sharing link - plan to read when I have time later

Article claims that this find can advance a lot of fields. However, besides increase of knowledge in biochemical field, what other advantages would studying it confer?

With some genetic engineering I wonder if this could be used to clean arsenic or lead from a field.

Too bad it wouldn't work for gold.

Drop some seeds in (e.g.) Fort Knox and watch the gold disappear?

It won't work for gold because gold does not provide any energy when oxidized.

But apparently it does (in some manner):

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131022/ncomms3614/full/nco...

I look forward to near-future fields of fiber-optic-eating plants sown over Internet trunk lines that can use MITM attacks to subvert the Bitcoin blockchain, and store the stolen coins in SSD fruits that grow an organic USB port for later harvesting.

Reading this, I totally expected it to be featured in a future episode of Almost Human ... and then I remembered it was canceled and I had a sad :(

We already have other plants that can target arsenic and lead. [1]

Japan planted millions of sunflowers after Fukushima to attempt to absorb radiation, as previous studies had shown they could absorb cesium. [2] However, they underperformed.

There is an ongoing challenge with hyperaccumulators of what to do with the plant material. When the plants decay or are ultimately destroyed, many toxic compounds are re-released. The cost of planting, harvesting, maintaining, transporting, and safely destroying toxic plant material can often be higher than simply stripping a few feet of soil off the ground and burying it in a landfill.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hyperaccumulators

[2] http://www.care2.com/causes/sunflowers-fail-in-nuclear-decon...

Holy crap that autoplay video is annoying. I'd never before seen a video widget that only lets you pause for about five seconds before it AUTOMATICALLY UNPAUSES ITSELF. Please tell me this is not the future.

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