Fungal bioremediation of contaminated soil

Our solution involving the usage of fungus Pleurotus ostreatus focuses on biodegradation of petroleum pollutants and supporting restoration of ecological balance in the environment to enable growth of edible grains. That will largely increase the access of urban areas to food sources in sustainable way.

Contamination of soil concerning a lot of industrial and urban areas makes it impossible to cultivate edible (free of toxic wastes) plants. In poor regions (e.g. Niger Delta) pollutants remain for many years because of lack of proper investments and governmental interest. It is not much better in richer countries where frequent oil leaks have a major health, ecological and financial impact on societies.

Current remediation methods require huge logistical and financial effort and take much time. Our solution tackles those issues to make the whole process simpler and more effective. That will help resolve the problem posed in the challenge.

1. It is proven that Pleurotus ostreatus is able to degrade hydrocarbons in contaminated soil:

Research1

Research2

2. The problem is Pleurotus does not grow in soil by itself. However, its growth is stimulated by straw. Our idea involves using that straw as a bioremediation medium. In our pre-experiment we examined fungus capability to grow in soil (with straw). The results encouraged us to conduct laboratory experiment to investigate the potential of fungal bioremedaition.

Report

3. There are other interesting uses of Pleurotus which can be further developed in our solution:

Absorbing heavy metals (cleaning both water and soil)

Killing nematodes: cleaning water in Africa from parasites

Our solution provides an easy and cheap way to clean oil spills while building fungus biomass to restore ecological balance. 

The most impacted by our solution are poor regions' societies with big oil supplies (e.g. Nigeria, Sudan) as well as rich countries with highly developed industry.

The solution would be deployed by government or NGO’s that would popularize the method and teach the natives how to grow fungus. In rich countries big companies/factories would introduce the solution by themselves or by a new company started by us to develop and introduce the solution.

Track the market price of reprocessing of contaminated soil (our solution will decrease the cost making the prices lower) or set up a new company specialized in introducing our solution. - Making it easier for companies and factories to deal with contamination and oil spills.

Monitoring the government/NGO actions in the region. - Cleaning petroleum wastes in poor regions to make it possible to start growing plants.

Our solution is unique because of complexity of possible uses and simple application. Pleurotus is easy to cultivate but needs straw for growth. However, that isn't a problem if we consider its bioremediation usage. Straw increases gas circulation so excavators wouldn't be needed to maintain proper bioremediation. Besides that, not only does Pleurotus degrade contaminants but also raises its own biomass. That would significantly hasten soil restoration to make it appropriate for agriculture.

Pleurotus has other possible uses to develop in the future: absorption of heavy metals and killing nematodes (in Africa to save water sources from both contaminants and parasites).

Our solution is designed for people in underprivileged communities when their interests are often not represented by the government. Our solution starts with those people when we teach them how they can fight oil pollution by themselves and ends when they manage to recultivate their environment without the need of excessive help from the government or NGOs. Because of that our solution is self-reliable and immune to changes in geopolitics ect.

Likewise our solution is human-centred because it aims to cover complexity of human needs: from the very basic like nutrition to more sophisticated as clean environment and independence in resolving own problems.

In poor regions our solution will be deployed while teaching the local communities how to grow fungus and use it to clean the environment. We hope to distribute samples needed to start local Pleurotus cultivation with government and NGOs' assistance. Then it should become affordable because of many uses of Pleurotus: from nutrition to bioremediation.

In rich countries two models of distribution may be considered. First model involves starting a new company to develop and introduce the solution. In the second option the idea of fungal bioremediation would remain in public domain and factories would introduce the solution by themselves.

At the very beginning of our work we need to rely on grants from companies/universities. When our project evolves we will be able to sustain ourselves by introducing our solution to big companies/factories interested in lowering their costs of reprocessing wastes. In the final phase with cooperation of governments and NGOs we will be able to deploy our solution to the poor regions where people will start to grow Pluerotus. Then our solution will start to grow by itself. We will only need to be monitoring local actions providing all necessary guidelines.

1. Strict budget (it is hard to predict the whole budget now because of complexity of the project).

2. Limited access to the international partners interesting in scaling our solution.

3. Limited access to the specialists who can provide us with the insight of all the technology used currently (its problems and the ways to solve them).

We hope to get the access to the scientific and academic community. We believe that brainstorm, mentorship and contacts with experts are the best ways to discover the whole potential of the solution. Thanks to Solve we would be able to face the global challenges with the help of such community.

We conduct our research and experiments thanks to the University of Warsaw (its staff and partners).