Date: Apr 28, 2010 Author: Christopher Post Source: 5 Keystone Edge (
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Frac Biologics, a start-up affiliated with the Allegheny-Singer Research Institute in Pittsburgh, has proposed an environmentally safe way to remove toxins from millions of gallons of wastewater left over from drilling the Marcellus Shale: a living cell colony that eats heavy metals for breakfast.
"Think of walking on stones across a stream. The slime on the rocks--that's biofilm," explains co-founder Christopher Post. The naturally occurring bacteria could be introduced to tanker trucks at drilling sites to attack heavy metals, such as strontium, nickel, and uranium.
Through Frac, Drs. Post, William Costerton and Garth Ehrlich will license the technology developed at the Allegheny-Singer institute, the research arm of Allegheny General Hospital that's part of the West Penn Allegheny Health System (WPAHS). They'll pay the Institute royalties from sales to gas drillers.
Disposing of the water used in hydraulic fracturing is a key issue for Pennsylvania. Chesapeake Energy has estimated that fracturing a typical Chesapeake Marcellus horizontal deep shale gas well requires an average of five and a half million gallons per well. The Pittsburgh start-up is ramping up to treat that goal.
"It's a three-stage process," says Post. "The first is proof of concept. Then it's an engineering issue to scale it up to treat 5,000 gallons." Bacteria could treat that volume in 20 minutes, and would survive 20 passes through the waste water. After final use, the bacteria are killed with bleach and heavy metal precipitates discarded. The third step, says Post, is full-scale on-site service. The technology could also be applied to acid mine drainage.
The Pittsburgh-based private equity-venture capital firm iNetworks is a major investor in Frac Biologics.
