“Bacteria are pretty interesting creatures, if you will. They will store inside their cell food that they consume in a polymer form, not unlike, in a way, how we store excess food as fat. If we recover the dead bacterial cells and refine this polymer, it’s a plastic. It’s a plastic very similar to polypropylene or polyethylene. In order for this process to work well, we need a lot of that particular food, a lot of organic carbon. And circling back to dairy manure, there is a lot of concentrated organic material present in dairy manure.”

Meet Erik Coats (bit.ly/3l1tmx3), a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (bit.ly/3cj8CNd) at the University of Idaho. As you can imagine, industrial and municipal wastewater contains more than just water. And it turns out all that “extra stuff” might have untapped potential. Erik hopes to use his knowledge of chemistry and engineering to extract nutrients and even plastics from our wastewater, providing extra cash for industry and municipalities and cleaning our water at the same time.

Visit our website uidaho.edu/vandaltheory. Email us at [email protected].

Learn about Idaho’s premier research university, University of Idaho, at uidaho.edu.

More U of I Research:

Working on an Icelandic volcano, geologist Erika Rader and colleagues used analytical instrumentation similar to those available on Mars rovers to characterize what geological features are most likely linked to high microbial abundance and diversity. They suggested a sampling strategy for looking for hints of microbes on Mars. Read more (bit.ly/2OHNp7S).

WWAMI faculty were awarded a $99,000 National Institutes of Health grant to explore the underlying causes of insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes. The study will help improve understanding of the interaction between diet, the gut’s microbiome and the host. Read more (bit.ly/30rooA6).

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, children from one Idaho school district are getting plenty of fresh air and teacher time. Beginning in September 2020, 100 K-5 students from the McCall-Donnelly School District learned science at the McCall Outdoor Science School. Read more (bit.ly/3t3kHgr).

Music:

“Young Republicans” by Steve Combs (bit.ly/2PsMCpw) via freemusicarchive.org, not modified (bit.ly/2Ju7MQb).

“Travel” by Cambo (bit.ly/3v7cd9P) via freemusicarchive.org, not modified (bit.ly/2OxRnzH).