[HN Gopher] Electrolysis can solve one of our biggest contaminat...
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Electrolysis can solve one of our biggest contamination problems
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 106 points
Date : 2025-12-30 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ethz.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (ethz.ch)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| This looks very promising! Efficiently dehalogenizing toxins,
| preserving their carbon "skeletons" to be repurposed for valuable
| (nontoxic) industrial chemicals, creating NaCl (table salt) as a
| byproduct... seems full of win to me. Here's hoping...
| CheeseFromLidl wrote:
| How does this work on a practical level? Do you scrape the soil
| to a depth of a foot and submit it to electrolysis or is the soil
| washed and the sludge then processed? How many grams of halogens
| does this recover per square acre of contaminated site? Does this
| sterilise the site?
| awakeasleep wrote:
| I think itd be meant for the facility that uses the halogenated
| compounds in the first place, integrated into their process.
| CheeseFromLidl wrote:
| a process that can be used *on site* to render environmental
| toxins such as DDT and lindane harmless and convert them into
| valuable chemicals - a breakthrough for the *remediation of
| contaminated sites*
| coryrc wrote:
| Today we scrape however many meters deep of soil and haul off
| to a landfill. I assume you'd scrape it up, run it through
| something to pull out everything bigger than a pebble. Wash the
| pebbles, the rinse water goes with the soil through the
| cleaning process.
|
| Certainly what comes out of the machine will not be living.
| talkingtab wrote:
| The real practical and immediate help would be ground water
| contamination. How many bad chemicals now permeate the water
| supplies around farming communities. Can this be used to treat
| the drinking water supply?
| philipkglass wrote:
| This article doesn't link to the primary research. It's
| referencing a Spark Award granted this year for work from 2024
| and 2021. Here are the relevant articles:
|
| "SCS Foundation News and Announcements 2025"
|
| https://www.chimia.ch/chimia/article/download/2025_885/2025_...
|
| _Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are highly recalcitrant
| and toxic compounds that pose a profound threat to ecosystems
| across the world. One of the most notorious representatives of
| this class of chemicals is hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) - a known
| human carcinogen - a specific isomer of which was used as the
| insecticide Lindane._
|
| ...
|
| _In 2021, the groups of Morandi and Waldvogel disclosed a
| vicinal dihalide shuttle reaction under electrochemical
| conditions, with which HCH could be fully dechlorinated. In the
| present work, instead of transferring chlorine to another
| molecule, we sought to sequester it as an innocuous inorganic
| chloride salt, which is preferable for large-scale application._
|
| Here's the free-to-read Accepted Manuscript version of the
| earlier 2021 publication:
|
| "Merging shuttle reactions and paired electrolysis for reversible
| vicinal dihalogenations"
|
| https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/chab/organ...
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| DDT is still sprayed today, indoors, in Africa and Asia to
| control for mosquitos, including in India.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254251962...
| hosh wrote:
| Dr John Todd has figured out and demonstrated a method to
| remediate DDT-contaminated water without the use of electrolysis,
| or other energy inputs. He was able to decontaminate one of the
| top superfund sites. The method is broadly versatile, and
| requires even lower tech than electrolysis. His methods can also
| sequester heavy metals. It involves introducing organisms across
| all of the kingdoms so that they self-organize on the
| contaminant.
|
| More narrowly, Paul Stamets has worked a lot on mycroremediation
| -- remediating with fungi.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Dr John Todd_
|
| ...who is this? This guy [1]?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Todd_(Canadian_biologist)
| hosh wrote:
| That is the dude.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| >Dr John Todd has figured out and demonstrated a method to
| remediate DDT-contaminated water ... It involves introducing
| organisms across all of the kingdoms so that they self-organize
| on the contaminant.
|
| So... he invented the ocean?
| hosh wrote:
| Biomimicry, not invention. He reasoned that the DNA is a vast
| library for transforming molecules from one to another, and
| therefore, ecosystems are capable of breaking down
| pollutants.
|
| In practice, there are multiple vats. The first stage has
| algae growing, which sequesters the heavy metals. The next
| stages follow other kinds of ecosystems, such as organisms
| from swamps. He will mix samples from multiple ecosystems
| that normally don't mix so that some kind of novel, self-
| organizing ecosystem can form around the pollutant.
|
| Then it is measuring and monitoring the contaminants. With
| the superfund site, he was tracking presence of the top ten
| pollutants on the EPA list. However, he also shows how people
| can use much simpler, non-industrial tests -- using samples
| from say, uncontaminated lake water nearby and use a
| microscope to see if the water being treated will kill those
| microorganisms. This allows for remediation to be executed by
| people who don't have access to labs, but still need a way to
| test their water.
|
| A much simpler version of this that follows the same design
| principles is capable of local, onsite treatment of ordinary
| black water.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| Likely not what you're describing, but this hypothetical is
| what came to mind.
|
| Consider if organism A consumes organism B in a symbiotic
| way. E.g., organism B makes berries.
|
| Then, we engineer A to seek out and consume DDT, perhaps by
| making DDT delicious or fragrant to A.
|
| Unexpected consequence: organism B evolves to produce
| berries that are absolutely redolent with DDT.
|
| This might happen centuries later, due to the DDT-phillic
| genes outlasting the presence of artificial DDT in the
| environment, or it could happen much sooner, or it might
| never happen. Hard to know. "Life finds a way."
| metalman wrote:
| short, sweet, got the zam. for toxic waste sites (superfund), and
| land fills this checks all the boxes. Given that many of the
| older developed areas that have contaminated sites are also
| building out solar power, and pushing electricity prices into the
| negative, I believe that this could be set up to run full tilt,
| when power was cheap, and idle when it is expensive.
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