Mycofiltration in SuD Systems
Outside of university curriculum, my interests in the landscaping profession often fall into the hydro and pedological sectors. While the importance of urban drainage is no longer as largely overlooked, little is yet to be mandated around the everyday degradation of our groundwater and soils. The main concepts behind sustainable urban drainage systems aim to increase permeable surface coverage and provide more stormwater retention areas to mitigate overland flooding. The base foundations for such systems often being open gravel beds to allow for surface runoff to infiltrate and recharge groundwater stores. However, while SuDs are used to remediate runoff water, the nature of most urban pollutants makes that process quite difficult.
A science I have come to be interested in is Mycofiltration. A subset of bioremediation, it used fungi-based processes to degrade pollutants from water and soils. Scientists have observed how fungi break down persistent pollutants since the 80s. Different strains have remediated petrochemicals, heavy metals, and pesticides.
Oyster mushroom mycelium has demonstrated the ability to break down hydrocarbons in oil by up to 98%. This ability led it to be used in the COSCO-Busan oil spill in 2007, to help clean up 58,000 gallons of oil from San Fransico Bay.
In Laboratory tests, scientists from the University of Helsinki found that the presence of fungi removed 70-84% of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) from contaminated soil. This is compared to only 29-43% using naturally occurring soil microorganisms. And only recently in April 2023, Australian scientists Amira Farzana Samat, Dee Carter and Ali Abbas published the successful decomposition of polypropylene in only 190 days by 2 strains of fungi.
The utilisation of these findings in the design of SuD systems could help realise the potential for fungal mycelium to remediate urban stormwater of human pollution, preferably before it reaches our groundwater stores. One day I would love to be part of the design and installation of such a project.
For further reading and reference see the link below.
………
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41529-023-00342-9#auth-Ali-Abbas-Aff1
A science I have come to be interested in is Mycofiltration. A subset of bioremediation, it used fungi-based processes to degrade pollutants from water and soils. Scientists have observed how fungi break down persistent pollutants since the 80s. Different strains have remediated petrochemicals, heavy metals, and pesticides.
Oyster mushroom mycelium has demonstrated the ability to break down hydrocarbons in oil by up to 98%. This ability led it to be used in the COSCO-Busan oil spill in 2007, to help clean up 58,000 gallons of oil from San Fransico Bay.
In Laboratory tests, scientists from the University of Helsinki found that the presence of fungi removed 70-84% of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) from contaminated soil. This is compared to only 29-43% using naturally occurring soil microorganisms. And only recently in April 2023, Australian scientists Amira Farzana Samat, Dee Carter and Ali Abbas published the successful decomposition of polypropylene in only 190 days by 2 strains of fungi.
The utilisation of these findings in the design of SuD systems could help realise the potential for fungal mycelium to remediate urban stormwater of human pollution, preferably before it reaches our groundwater stores. One day I would love to be part of the design and installation of such a project.
For further reading and reference see the link below.
………
Samat, A.F., Carter, D. and Abbas, A. (2023). Biodeterioration of pre-treated polypropylene by Aspergillus terreus and Engyodontium album. npj Materials Degradation, [online] 7(1), pp.1–11. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41529-023-00342-9.
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