Science | Science Highlight
Green catalysts mean business
Scientists from Diamond have been working on a multidisciplinary project with researchers from Manchester, Cardiff and Birmingham to harness the powers of a bacterium and create a green chemistry route for nanocatalyst production. The BBSRC and EPSRC funded study has led to a patented approach with potential applications in many technological areas ranging from energy production in microbial fuel cells, to remediation of contaminated groundwater and the production of pharmaceuticals.
Precious metals such as gold, platinum and palladium make highly effective catalysts. But they are expensive, which, when combined with difficulties in recovering them from spent catalysts, has limited their commercial use. A bacterium called Geobacter, which was only discovered in 1987, is proving to be an organism that can perform fascinating transformations of metals.
ESEM image of the FE (III)-reducing bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens.
The size bar is one micron.
Professor Jon Lloyd and his colleagues from the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Scientists at the University of Manchester have led the project and spent 10 years working to optimise production of magnetite from Geobacter sulfurreducens.
The team experimented with growth rates, magnetic properties and organic coatings to make a suitable biomagnetite support for a range of applications, including as a support for palladium nanoparticles.
This multidisciplinary work was conducted with mineralogists in Manchester and the magnetic spectroscopy group of Professor Gerrit van der Laan at Diamond. Also involved were catalysis groups at Cardiff University and the University of Birmingham and Birmingham’s Unit of Functional Bionanomaterials, led by Professor Lynne Macaskie.
Dr Vicky Coker, who conducted the multidisciplinary work with mineralogists in Manchester and the magnetic spectroscopy group at Diamond, says “This novel nanocatalyst has the potential to be used in a wide range of industrial processes and, looking ahead, we are keen to utilise the beamlines at Diamond, such as the new BLADE beamline, to discover more about its viability in areas such as precious metal catalysis, bioremediation of toxic metals and radionuclides and use of magnetic nanoparticles for cancer treatment.”
Microbial Engineering of Nanoheterostructures: Biological Synthesis of a Magnetically Recoverable Palladium Nanocatalyst
Victoria S. Coker, James A. Bennett, Neil D. Telling, Torsten Henkel, John M. Charnock, Gerrit van der Laan, Richard A. D. Pattrick, Carolyn I. Pearce, Richard S. Cutting, Ian J. Shannon, Joe Wood, Elke Arenholz, Ian C. Lyon and Jonathan R. Lloyd
ACS Nano, April 15 2010, 4 (5), pp 2577–2584
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nn9017944
