S. Hapuarachchi and T. G. Chasteen
Department of Chemistry
Sam Houston State University
Huntsville, Texas 77341-2117
Presented at the 58th ACS Southwest Regional Meeting in Austin, Texas USA November 3-6, 2002.
It is important to address environmental problems like this. Therefore, scientists have been trying to reduce the toxic nature of these selenium contaminated environmental sites by introducing detoxification methods. One of the detoxification techniques currently being practiced is bioremediation. The reducing power of bacteria such as Pseudomonas fluorescens has been used to chemically reduce the toxicity of soluble forms of selenium in laboratory studies.
Understanding of the parameters that effect the bioremediation process is key to the improvement of this technique. In the studies reported here the mass balance of selenium added to live bacterial cultures in the laboratory in a 2 L bioreactor was determined. The distribution of Se among solid, liquid, and gas phase in these cultures after 72 hours growth was examined using inductively coupled plasma spectrometry. New efforts to improve this method using alternating aerobic and anaerobic growth conditions were investigated.