Resilient Nature

Our Phyona (Phytomining of nanoparticles), aims at offering one integrated solution able to tackle two main problems that the UK is facing: - the dependence of the Country to other nations as supplies of raw materials, and the presence of pockets of land that cannot be used due to their high level of contamination. The current global political situation due to the war in Ukraine and the increase of the cost of living adding to the crisis provoked by the covid lockdowns indicated the importance of resilience and the ability to produce and manufacture within the country.

However, practical and ethical barriers holds us back from re-initiating large mining practices in the UK. We propose to upscale an alternative sustainable and responsible mining approach to tackle the need of specific types of metal-bearing nano-particles in the UK economy. Nano-particles are largely used in industries such as pharmaceutical, electronic, renewable and hydrogen based energy, biomedical industries and many more.

They are very high value materials with some of them reaching prices of £10,000 per kilogram and they tend to be produced using very high energy processes or through the use of strongly hazardous chemicals. We propose to use the ability of some plants to recover metals from contaminated soils, which are very common in the UK due to the intense industrial and mining use of the land in the past \[more than 200,000 sites have been categorised as contaminated in the UK - [https://www.gov.uk/contaminated-land][0]\].

We will also foster and enhance the ability of these plants to produce nanoparticles which we can then extract and convert in the form required by the market using low energy methods which do not require harsh acids or any other chemicals. Our preliminary studies indicate that ad hoc plants mix can uptake up to 1000ppm of metals in contaminated sites used for instance to treat industrial waters (Beechfield in Salford), or include waste from mining activities (Barnsley colliery site), and 90% of the material can be retrieved from the biomass in the form of stable nanoparticles.

These activities could generate high revenues (several millions per year) for the councils in these areas which are normally subjected to high unemployment and are in need of regeneration, while also regenerating soils and lands which are now in a state of abandonment and that could instead be re-purposed for housing, leisure, agriculture/horticulture etc.

[0]: https://www.gov.uk/contaminated-land