SBIR Phase I: Remediation of recalcitrant and emerging environmental organic contaminants of concern using bacterial approaches

这一小型企业创新研究(SBIR)项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力解决了土壤、沉积物和地下水中普遍存在的有毒有机污染物问题的关键社会需求。这项技术通过使用新的细菌菌株减少商业规模的处理时间和成本，显著提高了销毁有机环境污染物的能力。这些菌株被证明有能力迅速降解各种重要的、顽固的有机污染物，包括多氯联苯(PCbs)、多环芳烃(PAHs)和二恶英。该项目将评估大规模实施这项技术的成本和效果，其中包括在高温(60℃/150℃)下孵化污染物质以加强降解。这使得环境目标能够在许多地点实现，这些地点的清理工作目前受到高昂的补救成本的限制。商业影响是巨大的，并使数十亿美元的房地产在这些类别中的重新开发成为可能，以使这些物业重新得到生产和适当的使用。该技术的其他方面适用于新出现的污染物，如地下水中的1，4-二恶烷，并极大地扩大了环境工程师和土地所有者可用于清理长期污染物的选择。该SBIR第一阶段项目建议开发两种新的模式来销毁令人关注的有机污染物，以降低补救成本并改善结果。该项目改进了以前的生物修复方法，使用耐热细菌加快了对各种污染物的化学破坏速度。目标包括评估以全菌为基础处理大量(5-10吨)材料的效果和成本，以评估该技术的商业应用。这涉及到几个组成部分，包括生产细菌的大规模细胞生产方案的优化。该项目还将与环境工程公司合作，开发具有成本效益的方法，以在大规模处理期间保持适当的温度、湿度和氧气条件，以实现细胞的最佳生长。培养条件的变化和絮凝剂的添加将被用来确定可以达到的最低污染物水平。最后，将对土壤和沉积物以及1，4-二恶烷等可溶污染物使用细胞提取液而不是活细胞的新方法进行评估。这些方法将提供关于商业规模的补救成本的关键数据，还将评估针对新出现的地下水污染物的新方法，这些污染物很难用目前的技术进行补救。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project addresses the critical societal need to remediate widespread problems of toxic organic pollutants in soils, sediments and groundwater. The technology results in a significantly improved ability to destroy organic environmental contaminants by reducing treatment time and costs at commercial scales using novel bacterial strains. These strains have a demonstrated ability to rapidly degrade a variety of important, recalcitrant organic pollutants including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PaHs) and dioxins. This project will assess the costs and efficacy of the large-scale implementation of this technology that includes the incubation of the contaminated material at elevated temperatures (60¢ªC/150¢ªF) to enhance degradation. This enables environmental goals to be met on many sites whose cleanup is currently limited by the high costs of remediation. The commercial impact is significant and makes possible the re-development of many billions of dollars of real estate in these categories to return these properties to productive and appropriate use. Additional aspects of the technology are applicable to emerging pollutants such as 1,4-dioxane in groundwater and greatly expand the options available to environmental engineers and landowners for cleaning up long-lived pollutants. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop two novel modes of destroying organic contaminants of concern that reduce remediation costs and improve outcomes. The project improves on prior approaches to bioremediation by using heat-tolerant bacteria for faster rates of chemical destruction for a broad range of pollutants. Objectives include the evaluation of the efficacy and costs to treat large amounts (5-10 tons) of material with whole bacteria as basis to assess the commercial application of the technology. This involves several components, including the optimization of the large-scale cell production protocols to produce the bacteria. In conjunction with environmental engineering firms, the project also will develop cost-effective approaches to maintaining the appropriate temperature, moisture and oxygen conditions for optimal cell growth during large-scale treatments. Variations in incubation conditions and flocculent additions will be used to determine the lowest pollutant levels that can be attained. Finally, a new approach using cell extracts instead of live cells will be evaluated for both soils and sediments as well as for soluble pollutants like 1,4-dioxane. These approaches will provide critical data on remediation costs at commercial scale and also evaluate new approaches to emerging groundwater pollutants that are difficult to remediate with current technology.