In an innovative approach to combating climate change, scientists have formed an unexpected alliance with bacteria to extract rare metals crucial for green technology. Without the aid of these microbes, the world could soon face a shortage of raw materials needed to build essential components like turbines, electric cars, and solar panels.

Leading this groundbreaking work is a team from the University of Edinburgh, which is focusing on harnessing bacteria to extract valuable metals such as lithium, cobalt, and manganese from discarded batteries and electronic waste. These scarce and costly metals are essential for producing electric cars and other green technologies, a fact emphasized by Professor Louise Horsfall, chair of sustainable biotechnology at Edinburgh.

“If we are going to end our dependence on petrochemicals and shift to electricity for heating, transport, and power, we will increasingly rely on metals,” Horsfall explained. “All those photovoltaics, drones, 3D printing machines, hydrogen fuel cells, wind turbines, and electric car motors require metals—many of them rare—that are key to their operations.”

Political concerns also add complexity to this issue, with China controlling not only the primary supply of rare earth elements but also dominating their processing. “To navigate these challenges, we must develop a circular economy where these minerals are reused wherever possible. Otherwise, we will quickly deplete our resources,” Horsfall warned. “There’s a finite amount of these metals on Earth, and we can no longer afford to discard them as waste. New recycling technologies are essential if we want to address global warming.”

The key to this recycling effort lies in microbes. “Bacteria are fascinating organisms capable of performing incredible processes. Some bacteria can even synthesize metal nanoparticles, likely as a detoxification method. They latch onto metal atoms and then expel them as nanoparticles to avoid poisoning themselves,” said Horsfall.

Using these remarkable bacteria, Horsfall and her team have already achieved success in extracting metals from electronic waste. By dissolving waste from batteries and cars, they utilized bacteria to selectively latch onto specific metals and deposit them as solid compounds. “We started with manganese, then moved on to nickel and lithium. Using a different bacterial strain, we were able to extract cobalt and nickel,” she explained.

Notably, the strains of bacteria used for these extractions are naturally occurring. However, in the future, Horsfall’s team plans to employ gene-edited bacteria to enhance metal extraction efficiency. “For instance, we need to be able to separate cobalt and nickel, which we currently cannot do,” she noted.

The next phase of their research involves demonstrating that these metals, once recovered from electronic waste, can be repurposed into new batteries or devices. “If we can achieve this, we will contribute significantly to developing a circular economy for green technologies. New legislation mandates that by the next decade, recycled metals must be used at significant levels in manufacturing new green tech devices. These goals are ambitious, but bacteria will play a crucial role in meeting them,” Horsfall concluded.

By Impact Lab