Image - Boran Kartal
It seems that there is finally a remedy that, apart from being effective, is really very interesting. It's about a microbe from the order of Methanosarcinales that has been found by a group of researchers from RadBoud University, in the Netherlands, and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, who have prepared a study that has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A very interesting finding that could represent, without any doubt, a before and after in the fight against the consequences that global warming could bring.
The researchers already suspected that there was a microbe that could eat, not only methane, but also iron, but until now they had not found it. Fortunately, they have discovered an arch that uses iron to convert methane to carbon dioxide. In doing so, it reduces the amount of iron available to other bacteria, thus initiating an energy cascade that influences the iron-methane cycle and its emissions.
And as if this were not enough, these archaea can convert nitrate into ammonium, which is the food of anamnox bacteria, which convert ammonia to nitrogen… Without using oxygen! This is especially relevant for wastewater treatment, as highlighted by Boran Kartal, a microbiologist at the Max Planck Institute, who added:
A bioreactor containing anaerobic methane and ammonium oxidizing microorganisms can be used to simultaneously convert ammonium, methane and oxidized nitrogen in the wastewater into nitrogen gas and carbon dioxide, which have a much lower global warming potential.
Archaea could be very useful in wastewater.
Although they knew of the existence of these iron-dependent methane oxidants, they had not been able to isolate them. However, they did manage to find them in their own sample collection, and now they can be used to slow global warming.
You can read the study here (In English).