How beer could bring cheer to wastewater treatment
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found that residues of yeast from beer production is effective in removing heavy metals from water.
An MIT team took a type of yeast widely used in brewing processes, S. cerevisiae, and applied it to water spiked with trace amounts of lead. The researchers found that one gramme of dried yeast was enough to remove 12 milligrammes of the metal. They also found that the process was fast, taking less than five minutes.
The yeast particles removed the metal through the process of biosorption, in which contaminants bind to the cell structure of biomass. Biosorption has long been in use in industrial wastewater treatment. The suggestion from the researchers at MIT is that years from breweries could be a cheap, abundant and easy-to-use material.
Following this discovery, the MIT team said it would next focus on devising a practical system for processing the water after treatment to recover the yeast and the metal particles for reuse.
