Soil, sludge treatment with biotech

TECHNOLOGY

By MICHAEL JOHN UGLO
THIS is the seventh lecture on biotechnology and I want to wish you all happy learning as we proceed.
Prior to this, I have made a point about having regard and respect for one another and not to abuse anyone. Now, as you all can see, this nation will only develop when all of us improve our attitude like keeping noises down when our neighbours are having a rest.
You have no right to deprive them of their sleep and rest. Respect and look after public properties and not destroy them and write graffiti on them.
Respect and take care of our susceptible population like girls, mothers and sisters as well as our elderlies and the little children. You have no right to abuse them. You are acting out of ignorance and stupidity because you have a very stubborn mind that is devoid of wisdom and prudent reasoning.
Those who do this will never progress in life because they are mentally weak people and will not leave a good legacy. School children and young people have to listen to parental advice because your parents always want you to be the best.
Never ever disobey your good parental advices. You will realize their importance after they are gone to eternal rest or either when you are in a terrible situation as a result of your disobedience to good advice.
Now to the topic of today’s discussion.

Soil
Soil is the most used and abused physical matter that humans interact with for their survival since antiquity. Soil forms the basis on which food is grown and similarly draught animals are raised for slaughter as farm animals to supplement protein for human diet worldwide. Besides mentioning these obvious uses of the soil and for agricultural purposes, a myriad of other uses is seen in the rest of the other organisms comprising of the plants and animals as well as the microorganisms. The inseparable nutrient cycles integrally accompany this intricate life support system for without which there would not be any life in existence as we know it today.
The overall picture is the biosphere in which the ecosystems function to yield the biodiversity found on the land which is prevalent on the crust of the planet earth. The soil takes an elaborate process to form and that constitutes of rock debris at its base resulting from the thawing, abrasion and erosion through the actions of the erosive agents. These are combined with the humus from decayed organic matter from plants and animals. The microbes decompose the humus by feeding on the decayed complex organic matter (hydrocarbon compounds) and they need to respire (C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O + Energy) which gives them the energy to convert these detritus into simpler substances known as nutrients.
The obvious by products for the respiration of these detritivores are carbon dioxide, water and the energy needed to carry out those respiratory as well as metabolic activities.
The nutrients in the form of the simple substances produced are readily taken up by the plant roots in the form of nutrients as salts with water to build them up again into complex hydrocarbon compounds or organic matter with the other necessary minerals and vitamins. This process happens in a chemical reaction that becomes the natural food manufacturing process called photosynthesis (6CO2 + 6H2O  C6H12O6 + 6O2) as if from infinitesimal integrals as in a slope of calculus. Through the process of photosynthesis which literally means the building-up of food materials (glucose) using sunlight on a chemical substrate of a green pigment called the chlorophyll including the biomolecules where the carbohydrates are made including the other chemical compounds as a cascade of byproducts and derivatives essential for life as such, as protein, lipids, amino acids, nucleotides, vitamins and nucleic acids as the overall antiderivative. Thus, when animals feed on these plant foods, they are not only harvesting and eating the sugars but a complex amalgam of a variety of nutrients as well necessary for a healthy plant diet unlike some issues raised in transgenic plants which yield genetically modified crops (GMOs).
Hence, it can be seen that planet earth has an action and a reaction to balance itself as in this simple case of respiration and photosynthesis being chemically opposite to each other that are seemingly a finite integral and a derivative as in integration and differentiation. This upholds a rate of change in a reaction and an accumulation of that reaction of an integral which holds the matter in the nature to keep life rotating in a cycle recycles carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen elements.
These are very necessary for life to exist as can be seen from the above two major chemical equations that one’s byproduct becomes another’s reagent and vice versa. The many soil nutrients undergo their respective nutrient cycles such as the nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle, the phosphoric cycle and the rest as biochemical cycles.
These nutrient cycles take many tens of years to naturally replenish and become nutrients enriched again for farming as in a shifting cultivation like in subsistence living where by an arable land is seen to be so when it has been left fallow for 10 to 30 years. These natural recycling periods are reduced to feed the ever-expanding world population by farming on the same land over and over again with the use of inorganic chemical fertilizers and in a reduced time span.
This poses a huge problem for the environment because it stresses out the arable land from its natural replenishing cycle. The once arable land are then rendered unusable with the build-up of the inorganic agrochemicals and not enough time for the nature to detoxify these farm lands to naturally rejuvenate for farming again. The land consequently become acidified and even eroded of the nutrients when the top soil is left uncovered and the erosive agents transport them away.
Wastes and effluents as activated from municipalities are sludges and become a major problem as well. However, with the use of biotechnology that can be acted on by microbes to detoxify organic as well as the inorganic constituents. The major component at approximately 70 to 90 per cent are usually organic and the remainder are inorganic wastes.
The microbes to act on them include bacteria, fungi, yeasts, protozoa and other decomposers to break down these sludges and render them detoxified. The different respective species of microbes choose different components of the sludge to work on them or digest them.
Furthermore, artificial aeration and addition of nutrients can increase the population of the local microbial digesters which can directly cause an augmented slurry’s biological degradation of its contaminants. Adding electron acceptors as radicals such as nitrates can greatly detoxify fatal organic wastes to optimally acceptable levels. The hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and the ozone (O3) dissolved in water can also hugely degrade toxic organic wastes in the slurry.
To give some examples, the petroleum hydrocarbon such as oil spills and plastic debris on the sea floors can be worked on and be removed by species of bacteria namely Acinetobacter, Mycobacteria, Pseudomonas to degrade and clean-up.
The agrochemicals in the nature when used in the agricultural farms can be cleared up with particular pesticides such as aldrin, malathion, parathion and dieldrin.
These are detoxified by a particular fungus known as a Xylaria xylestrix.
Phenols, organophosphates, hydrocarbons and polycyclic aromatics and polychlorinated biphenyls are organic compounds that can be detoxified by Pseudomonas which is a famous, microscopic bacteria that lives in the soil. The cyanobacteria are used for various purposes in the bioreactors to remove nutrients that accumulate in water bodies to cause eutrophication including nitrates, phosphates and nitrites.
Bioreactors are also used to make high valued products such as the production of high energy sources such as gamma-linoleic acids and beta-carotene.
It is further seen that heavy metals such as lead, mercury and arsenide which become metabolic and respiratory poisons are further biologically absorbed by a cyanobacteria called the Phormidium laminosum. There are also certain species of bacteria that can metabolise sulfur and remove heavy metals as well as sulfur compounds.
These can be applied at the mine sites where tailing dams in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere pose a huge health hazard for ocal communities living in the vicinity of the mines and further downstream.
It further protects the groundwater from contamination as the lethal heavy metals and toxic chemicals are digested by the respective types of microbes and ecologically sound wasted are produced. The Environment is anticipated to be cleaner and better again with bioremediation made possible through biotechnology.

Next week: Biotechnology to solve air pollution and waste gases
My Prayer for PNG today is: “Deep within my heart I feel, voices whispering to me. Words that I can’t understand, meanings I must clearly hear. Calling me to follow close, lest I leave myself behind. Calling me to walk into, evening shadows one more time… So I leave my boats behind, leave them on familiar shores. Set my heart upon the deep, follow you again my Lord…”

• Michael Uglo is a science textbook author and lecturer in avionics, auto-piloting and aircraft engineering. Please email comments to: [email protected]