Environmental Biotechnology

Theory and Application

Gareth G. Evans, Judy Furlong

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780470975381
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biotechnology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Environmental Biotechnology: Theory and Applications, 2 nd Edition is designed to draw together the microscopic, functional level and the macroscopic, practical applications of biotechnology and to explain how the two relate within an environmental context. It presents the practical biological approaches currently employed to address environmental problems and provides the reader with a working knowledge of the science that underpins them. Biotechnology has now become a realistic alternative to many established approaches for manufacturing, land remediation, pollution control and waste management and is therefore an essential aspect of environmental studies. Fully updated to reflect new developments in the field and with numerous new case studies throughout this edition will be essential reading for undergraduates and masters students taking modules in Biotechnology or Pollution Control as part of Environmental Science, Environmental Management or Environmental Biology programmes.

Quote from the first edition:

"There is no doubt that this book will be one of inspiration for all professionals in the field. It is a very good framework for understanding the complex nature of processes and technology and as such it will be useful for researchers, practitioners and other parties who need a working knowledge of this fascinating subject."
—Professor Bjorn Jensen, Chairman of the European Federation of Biotechnology, Environmental Biotechnology section and Research and Innovation Director, DHI Water and Environment

Chapter 1

Introduction to Environmental Biotechnology

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines biotechnology as ‘the application of science and technology to living organisms, as well as parts, products and models thereof, to alter living or non-living materials for the production of knowledge, goods and services’ (OECD, 2002). Despite the inclusiveness of this definition, there was a time when the biotechnology sector was seen as largely medical or pharmaceutical in nature, particularly amongst the general public. While to some extent the huge research budgets of the drug companies and the widespread familiarity of their products made this viewpoint understandable, it somewhat unfairly distorted the picture. Thus therapeutic instruments were left forming the ‘acceptable’ face of biotechnology, while elsewhere, the science was all too frequently linked with an uneasy feeling of unnatural interference. The agricultural, industrial and environmental applications of biotechnology are potentially enormous, but the shadow of Frankenstein has often been cast across them. Genetic engineering may be relatively commonplace in pharmaceutical thinking and yet when its wider use is mooted in other spheres, such as agriculture, for example even today much of society views the possibility with suspicion, if not outright hostility.

The history of human achievement has always been episodic. For a while, one particular field of endeavour seems to hold sway as the preserve of genius and development, before the focus shifts and the next wave of progress forges ahead in a dizzy exponential rush in some entirely new direction. So it was with art in the Renaissance, music in the eighteenth century, engineering in the nineteenth and physics in the twentieth. Now it is the age of the biological—in many ways forming a kind of rebirth, following on from the heyday of the great Victorian naturalists, who provided so much input into the developing science.

It is then, perhaps, no surprise that the European Federation of Biotechnology begins its ‘Brief History’ of the science in the year 1859, with the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin. Though his famous voyage aboard HMS Beagle, which led directly to the formulation of his (then) revolutionary ideas, took place when he was a young man, he had delayed making them known until 1858, when he made a joint presentation before the Linnaean Society with Alfred Russell Wallace, who had, himself, independently come to very similar conclusions. Their contribution was to view evolution as the driving force of life, with successive selective pressures over time endowing living beings with optimised characteristics for survival. Neo-Darwinian thought sees the interplay of mutation and natural selection as fundamental. The irony is that Darwin himself rejected mutation as too deleterious to be of value, seeing such organisms, in the language of the times, as ‘sports’—oddities of no species benefit. Indeed, there is considerable evidence to suggest that he seems to have espoused a more Lamarckist view of biological progression, in which physical changes in an organism's lifetime were thought to shape future generations.

Darwin died in 1882. Ninety-nine years later, the first patent for a genetically modified organism was granted to Ananda Chakrabarty of the US General Electric, relating to a strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa engineered to express the genes for certain enzymes in order to metabolise crude oil. Twenty years on from that, the first working draft of the human genome sequence was published and the full genetic blueprint of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, that archetype of eukaryotic genetics research, announced—and developments have continued on what sometimes feels like an almost daily basis since then. Today biotechnology has blossomed into a major growth industry with increasing numbers of companies listed on the world's stock exchanges and environmental biotechnology is coming firmly into its own alongside a raft of ‘clean technologies’ working towards ensuring the sustainable future of our species and our planet.

Thus, at the other end of the biotech timeline, a century and a half on from Origin of Species, the principles it first set out remain of direct relevance, although increasingly in ways that Darwin himself could not possibly have foreseen.

The Role of Environmental Biotechnology

If pharmaceutical biotechnology represents the glamorous end of the market, then environmental applications are decidedly more in the Cinderella mould. The reasons for this are fairly obvious. The prospect of a cure for the many diseases and conditions currently promised by gene therapy and other biotech-oriented medical miracles can potentially touch us all. Our lives may, quite literally, be changed. Environmental biotechnology, by contrast, deals with far less apparently dramatic topics and, though their importance, albeit different, may be every bit as great, their direct relevance is far less readily appreciated by the bulk of the population. Cleaning up contamination and dealing rationally with wastes is, of course, in everybody's best interests, but for most people, this is simply addressing a problem which they would rather had not existed in the first place. Even for industry, though the benefits may be noticeable on the balance sheet, the likes of effluent treatment or pollution control are more of an inevitable obligation than a primary goal in themselves. In general, such activities are typically funded on a distinctly limited budget and have traditionally been viewed as a necessary inconvenience. This is in no way intended to be disparaging to industry; it simply represents commercial reality.

In many respects, there is a logical fit between this thinking and the aims of environmental biotechnology. For all the media circus surrounding the grand questions of our age, it is easy to forget that not all forms of biotechnology involve xenotransplantation, genetic modification, the use of stem cells or cloning. Some of the potentially most beneficial uses of biological engineering, and which may touch the lives of the majority of people, however indirectly, involve much simpler approaches. Less radical and showy, certainly, but powerful tools, just the same. Environmental biotechnology is fundamentally rooted in waste, in its various guises, typically being concerned with the remediation of contamination caused by previous use, the impact reduction of current activity or the control of pollution. Thus, the principal aims of this field are the manufacture of products in environmentally harmonious ways, which allow for the minimisation of harmful solids, liquids or gaseous outputs or the clean-up of the residual effects of earlier human occupation.

The means by which this may be achieved are essentially twofold. Environmental biotechnologists may enhance or optimise conditions for existing biological systems to make their activities happen faster or more efficiently, or they resort to some form of alteration to bring about the desired outcome. The variety of organisms which may play a part in environmental applications of biotechnology is huge, ranging from microbes through to trees and all are utilised on one of the same three fundamental bases—accept, acclimatise or alter. For the vast majority of cases, it is the former approach, accepting and making use of existing species in their natural, unmodified form, which predominates.

The Scope for Use

There are three key points for environmental biotechnology interventions, namely in the manufacturing process, waste management or pollution control, as shown in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 The three intervention points

Accordingly, the range of businesses to which environmental biotechnology has potential relevance is almost limitless. One area where this is most apparent is with regard to waste. All commercial operations generate waste of one form or another and for many, a proportion of what is produced is biodegradable. With disposal costs rising steadily across the world, dealing with refuse constitutes an increasingly high contribution to overheads. Thus, there is a clear incentive for all businesses to identify potentially cost-cutting approaches to waste and employ them where possible. Changes in legislation throughout Europe, the US and elsewhere, combined with growing environmental awareness and a burgeoning demand for reduced carbon footprints have inevitably driven these issues higher up the political agenda and biological methods of waste treatment have gained far greater acceptance as a result. For those industries with particularly high biowaste production, the various available treatment biotechnologies can offer considerable savings.

Manufacturing industries can benefit from the applications of whole organisms or isolated bio-components. Compared with conventional chemical processes, microbes and enzymes typically function at lower temperatures and pressures. The lower energy demands this makes leads to reduced costs, but also has clear benefits in terms of both the environment and work-place safety. Additionally, biotechnology can be of further commercial significance by converting low cost organic feedstocks into high value products or, since enzymatic reactions are more highly specific than their chemical counterparts, by deriving final substances of high relative purity. Almost inevitably, manufacturing companies produce wastewaters or effluents, many of which contain biodegradable contaminants, in varying degrees. Though traditional permitted discharges to sewer or watercourses may be adequate for some, other industries, particularly those with recalcitrant or highly concentrated effluents, have found significant benefits to be gained from using biological treatment methods themselves on site. Though careful monitoring and process control are essential, biotechnology stands as a particularly cost-effective means of reducing the pollution potential of wastewater, leading to enhanced public relations, compliance with environmental legislation and quantifiable cost-savings to the business.

Those involved in processing organic matter, for example or with drying, printing, painting or coating processes, may give rise to the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or odours, both of which represent environmental nuisances, though the former is more damaging than the latter. For many, it is not possible to avoid producing these emissions altogether, which leaves treating them to remove the offending contaminants the only practical solution. Especially for relatively low concentrations of readily water soluble VOCs or odorous chemicals, biological technologies can offer an economic and effective alternative to conventional methods.

The use of biological cleaning agents is another area of potential benefit, especially where there is a need to remove oils and fats from process equipment, work surfaces or drains. Aside from typically reducing energy costs, this may also obviate the need for toxic or dangerous chemical agents. The pharmaceutical and brewing industries, for example both have a long history of employing enzyme-based cleaners to remove organic residues from their process equipment. In addition, the development of effective biosensors, powerful tools which rely on biochemical reactions to detect specific substances, has brought benefits to a wide range of sectors, including the manufacturing, engineering, chemical, water, food and beverage industries. With their ability to detect even small amounts of their particular target chemicals, quickly, easily and accurately, they have been enthusiastically adopted for a variety of process monitoring applications, particularly in respect of pollution assessment and control.

Contaminated land is a growing concern for the construction industry, as it seeks to balance the need for more houses and offices with wider social and environmental goals. The re-use of former industrial sites, many of which occupy prime locations, may typically have associated planning conditions attached which demand that the land be cleaned-up as part of the development process. With urban regeneration and the reclamation of ‘brown-field’ sites increasingly favoured in many countries over the use of virgin land, remediation has come to play a significant role and the industry has an on-going interest in identifying cost-effective methods of achieving it. Historically, much of this has involved simply digging up the contaminated soil and removing it to landfill elsewhere. Bioremediation technologies provide a competitive and sustainable alternative and in many cases, the lower disturbance allows the overall scheme to make faster progress.

As the previous brief examples show, the range of those which may benefit from the application of biotechnology is lengthy and includes the chemical, pharmaceutical, water, waste management and leisure industries, as well as manufacturing, the military, energy generation, agriculture and horticulture. Clearly, then, this may have relevance to the viability of these ventures and, as was mentioned at the outset, biotechnology is an essentially commercial activity. Environmental biotechnology must compete in a world governed by the Best Practicable Environmental Option (BPEO) and the Best Available Techniques Not Entailing Excessive Cost (BATNEEC). Consequently, the economic aspect will always have a large influence on the uptake of all initiatives in environmental biotechnology and, most particularly, in the selection of methods to be used in any given situation. It is impossible to divorce this context from the decision-making process. By the same token, the sector itself has its own implications for the wider economy.

The Global Environmental Market

The global environmental market is undergoing a period of massive growth. In 2001, the UK's Department of Trade and Industry estimated its value at around 1500 billion US dollars, of which some 15–20% was biotech-based. Although the passage of time has now shown some of the growth forecasts then made for the following years to have been somewhat optimistic, a recent study predicts that the market will have grown to 7400 billion US dollars by 2025 (Helmut Kaiser Consultancy, 2009). There are several major factors acting as drivers for this growth, including a greater general awareness of environmental issues, the widespread adoption of sustainable best practice by industry and geo-political changes that open new territories for technology transfer. In addition, biotechnology has increasingly gained acceptance for clean manufacturing applications, with the use of biomimetics in particular showing marked expansion over recent years, while energy production, waste management and land remediation have all benefited from the ongoing trend stimulating the sales of biotechnology-based environmental processing methods. Water treatment in its broadest sense has been perhaps the biggest winner in all this, the sector now accounting for some 25% of the total global environmental market (Helmut Kaiser Consultancy, 2009).

The export of environmental technologies is now a significant contributor to the global market, which will continue to expand in the burgeoning worldwide trend towards driving economic development alongside strong ecological awareness. Although such technology transfer is likely to continue to play a major role on the global scene, it is also probable that many countries will increasingly build their own comprehensive indigenous environmental industry over the coming years, thus circumventing their dependence on innovation imports.

Over the last decade, as many predicted, the regulatory framework across the world has experienced a radical tightening, with existing legislation on environmental pollution being more rigorously enforced and more stringent compliance standards implemented. It is hard to imagine that this trend will stop in the coming years, which once again feeds the expectation that it will act as a significant stimulus for the sales of biotechnology-based environmental processing methods. This would seem particularly likely in the current global main markets for environmental technologies, namely Asia in general, China, Japan, Europe and the USA (Helmut Kaiser Consultancy, 2009).

The benefits are not, however, confined to the balance sheet. The OECD (2001) concluded that the industrial use of biotechnology commonly leads to increasingly environmentally harmonious processes and additionally results in lowered operating and/or capital costs. For years, industry has appeared locked into a seemingly unbreakable cycle of growth achieved at the cost of environmental damage. This OECD investigation provided probably the first hard evidence to support the reality of biotechnology's long heralded promise of alternative production methods which are ecologically sound and economically efficient. A variety of industrial sectors, including pharmaceuticals, chemicals, textiles, food and energy were examined, with a particular emphasis on biomass renewable resources, enzymes and bio-catalysis. While such approaches may have to be used in tandem with other processes for maximum effectiveness, it seems that their use invariably leads to reduction in operating or capital costs, or both. Moreover, the research also concluded that it is clearly in the interests of governments of the developed and developing worlds alike to promote the use of biotechnology for the substantial reductions in resource and energy consumption, emissions, pollution and waste production it offers. The potential contribution to be made by the appropriate use of biotechnology to both environmental and economic sustainability would seem to be clear.

The upshot of this is that few biotech companies in the environmental sector perceive problems for their own business development models, principally as a result of the wide range of businesses for which their services are applicable and the large potential for growth. Competition within the sector is not seen as a major issue either, since the field is still largely open and unsaturated, and from the employment perspective, the biotech industry seems a robust one. Although the economic downturn saw the UK science labour market in general shed both permanent and contract staff throughout 2009, the biotech sector increased its demand for skilled scientists and predictions suggest that it will continue to buck the trend in the future (SRG, 2010). Moreover, there has been an established tendency towards niche specificity, with companies operating in more specialised sub-arenas within the environmental biotechnology umbrella. Given the number and diversity of such possible slots, coupled with the fact that new opportunities, and the technologies to capitalise on them, are developing apace, this trend seems likely to continue, though the business landscape is beginning...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction to Environmental Biotechnology
• Chapter 2: Microbes and Metabolism
• Chapter 3: Fundamentals of Biological Intervention
• Chapter 4: Pollution and Pollution Control
• Chapter 5: Contaminated Land and Bio-Remediation
• Chapter 6: Aerobes and Effluents
• Chapter 7: Phytotechnology and Photosynthesis
• Chapter 8: Biotechnology and Waste
• Chapter 9: Genetic Manipulation
• Chapter 10: Integrated Environmental Biotechnology
• Bibliography and Suggested Further Reading
• Index