Electrolysis Can Solve One of Our Biggest Contamination Problems

> The reactor used by the researchers consists of an undivided electrolysis cell in which dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is used as a solvent

They remove the DDT from the soil into the solvent (itself quite unpleasant). From there, it's pretty easy to filter out the soil and clean it up. Add water and boil or freeze dry to extract it back out, preferably capturing it to be reused.

  a process that can be used *on site* to render environmental toxins such as DDT and lindane harmless and convert them into valuable chemicals – a breakthrough for the *remediation of contaminated sites*

Take a bunch of contaminated soil, wash with DMSO, filter out soil, wash again, take all of that and electrolyze it.

Take the soil, dilute with lots of water and boil in a chamber with a fractionating column / distillation setup to reclaim the last of the DMSO.

I'd be surprised if this was in any way economical, but it's the cheapest way to permanently get rid of DDT, and the production of benzene and other hydrocarbons is a nice side benefit to reclaim some of the cost.

It seems scam adjacent because a high proportion of other stuff written in the same tone by the same types of people is a scam. The researchers don't write these puff pieces generally and the people that do spend the rest of their day writing "not technically a lie" type inflated corporate newspeak puffery that are basically "we're actually doing the customer a factor by charging more for less" tier lies.

It's also not unlikely that the experts involved provided a list of possible use cases and "making benzene from 3rd world dirt" was way down it and they had no idea the writer would lead with it.

In practice, there are multiple vats. The first stage has algae growing, which sequesters the heavy metals. The next stages follow other kinds of ecosystems, such as organisms from swamps. He will mix samples from multiple ecosystems that normally don’t mix so that some kind of self-organizing ecosystem can form.

Then it is measuring and monitoring the contaminants. With the superfund site, he was tracking presence of the top ten pollutants on the EPA list. However, he also shows how people can use much simpler, non-industrial tests — using samples from say, uncontaminated lake water nearby and use a microscope to see if the water being treated will kill those microorganisms. This allows for remediation to be executed by people who don’t have access to labs, but still need a way to test their water.

A much simpler version of this that follows the same design principles is capable of local, onsite treatment of ordinary black water.

After applying the ointment I got an upset stomach in minutes so yeah…. It was well absorbed.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3141840/

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/drugs/21230-diclofenac...

You could get DMSO and ketamine at the vet supply store back then in the 80s. I heard of people investing acid via DMSO in that time frame, but it could have been an urban legend. It was a horse area and DMSO was used with horses to get stuff deep into their legs or something like that.

But yea, I overrated it's nastiness.