A team of scientists from the University of Minnesota’s College of Biological Sciences has received a $600,000 grant to study the use of bacteria to clean waste water from the hydraulic fracturing – fracking – of gas and oil deposits.
The research team plans to use a process originally developed to remove agricultural pesticides from soil and water.
The goal is to take waste water contaminated by the addition of chemicals for the drilling process and clean it to the point it can be re-use in fracking of other wells and to significantly reduce the overall amount of water used by the drilling industry.
Read a university news release about the research.