Establish a Penn State Center for Environmental Kinetics - as part of the Environmental Molecular Science Institute (EMSI) program (NSF/DOE-OBER) [PNNL Scope #47287, Zachara EMSI)
EMSL Project ID
13305
Abstract
The National Science Foundation has awarded a team of Penn State researchers $6.7 million to establish a new center for the study of environmental kinetics.Susan L. Brantley, director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute in Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, and her team of Penn State and U.S. Department of Energy collaborators received the award from NSF Divisions of Chemistry and Earth Sciences under the Environmental Molecular Science Institute (EMSI) program. An additional $2.5 million awarded by the DOE Office of Science, Division of Environmental Remediation Sciences will support DOE partners in their collaborative work on the project. The award, to establish the Penn State Center for Environmental Kinetics Analysis (CEKA), will be administered by the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, in its role as one of the Penn State Institutes of the Environment, directed by William Easterling.
The Center for Environmental Kinetics Analysis will bring together chemists, geochemists, biochemists, soil scientists and engineers to measure and synthesize kinetic data for environmental systems and to promote modeling of the temporal evolution of such systems. The group will try to answer jointly the question, "How fast do pollutants and natural salts react with minerals in soils and aquifers?" The center will emphasize the problem of how to answer this question using laboratory or computer experiments and then how to scale the answer to natural systems. CEKA hypothesizes that training students to think about environmental problems at several scales of analysis will promote better approaches for analysis of environmental systems.
Problems of scaling -- from the dimensions of a molecule to the dimensions of a field system -- permeate many technical disciplines. The center will work to increase understanding of scaling and environmental systems, not only among researchers, but among the general public as well. Toward this end, CEKA will prepare museum exhibits using a computer-generated 3-D visualization system. The 3-D visualization system will present movies demonstrating the wide variety of time-scales and length-scales that must be considered when dealing with environmental systems.
As an Environmental Molecular Science Institute, the center has as part of its mission to create broad interdisciplinary educational opportunities. To accomplish this, CEKA will incorporate postdoctoral research, graduate and undergraduate training, and public outreach components.
The center will support up to three postdoctoral scholars and 15 graduate students to analyze reaction rates of minerals with and without bacteria. A summer undergraduate program will place students in the laboratories of CEKA faculty to conduct research in the area of environmental kinetics. CEKA participants at all levels will contribute data from their environmental kinetics research to Web-accessible databases, and as content for 3-D visualization exhibits. These databases will allow fellow environmental scientists to predict the time evolution of complex environmental problems over various temporal and spatial scales. CEKA also will deliver outreach to K-12 students through teaching modules; and to fellow professionals through short courses.
The CEKA team includes Brantley, a geochemist who specializes in measurement of kinetics data in the laboratory and field, and James D. Kubicki, a geochemist assistant director who specializes in spectroscopic measurement and molecular modeling of kinetic system. The Penn State team includes faculty Peter J. Heaney, geosciences; Mercedes Maroto-Valer, energy and geo-environmental engineering; Kwadwo A. Osseo-Asare, materials science and engineering; Ming Tien, biochemistry and molecular biology; Karl T. Mueller and Kenneth M. Merz, chemistry; William D. Burgos, Brian A. Dempsey and Bruce E. Logan, civil and environmental engineering; and Carmen E. Martinez, crop and soil sciences.
The Penn State team will be joined by DOE scientists including Peter Lichtner of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Carl Steefel and Glenn Waychunas of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and John Zachara of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Included is Ryan Mathur, geology department at Juniata College. All of these researchers will be hosts to Penn State students in their laboratories.
EMSL Specifics - Bill Burgo's grad student Morgan Minyard will visit PNNL/EMSL ~ June 18-Aug 12 to work w/ Ravi Kukkadapu understand rates of biologically mediated reactions and involving them in issues related to field-generated problems of environmental kinetics.
-----Original Message-----
From: Zachara, John M
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 9:36 AM
To: Wang, Zheming; Moore, Dean A; Jeon, Byong Hun
Cc: Hatch, Jamie L; Enloe, Sonia Y; Liikala, Linda L
Subject: FW: Morgan's stay at EMSL
Zheming - We will have a student from Penn State University here this summer who desires to do some CLIFS measurements, see note below. She would have to prepare the samples in 331, and then measure these in EMSL. She will also perform some U(VI) reduction experiments with these solids to evaluate the influence of adsorption on bioavailability.
John M. Zachara
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Burgos [mailto:wdb3@psu.edu]
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 11:25 AM
To: Jeon, Byong Hun; Zachara, John M
Cc: mlm503@psu.edu
Subject: Morgan's stay at EMSL
Byong-Hun and John
Due to some equipment issues for our FRC column experiments, Morgan Minyard will delay her arrival to EMSL by one week. Instead of starting Mon 06/20, she will begin Mon 06/27. Morgan will notify EMSL of this change.
My expectations are for her to:
#1 assist Byong-Hun with his current experiments (likely more than 50% of her time)
#2 measure sorption of U(VI) onto illite and aluminum hydroxide (solution chemistry to match subsequent bioreduction experiments - focus on high sorption densities)
#3 analyze U(VI)-loaded minerals with CLIFS (split samples to be analyzed later by EXAFS by Kemner)
#4 measure bioreduction kinetics of U(VI)-loaded minerals (experiments designed such that >90% of U(VI) is sorbed)
Below are just a few experimental notes for initial clarification (and potential discussion):
The background electrolyte in these experiments will be a PIPES-buffered artificial groundwater representative of Area 2 at the FRC (referred to as PBAGW; Morgan is familiar with recipe). The DMRB will be Geobacter sulfurreducens (BH is familiar with culturing on fumarate). Morgan will bring specimen illite with her. Amorphous Al(OH)3 will be synthesized at EMSL (Morgan will need assistance). Bioreduction experiments will be performed at "high" U(VI) sorption densities (but below surface precipitation of any U(VI) solids) with ethanol as the electron donor.
EMSL Visit November 2005
One Penn State faculty member (Burgos) and five Penn State graduate students (Bowers, Davis, Hummer, Ross and Tan) will travel to PNNL for two days of on-site collaborative work with PNNL host scientists. The Penn State faculty and students will have the opportunity to meet numerous PNNL scientists, tour analytical and experimental facilities, and identify how EMSL capabilities might be used in their own research. In addition, several students will participate in experimental/analytical research activities aligned with their own interests and the faculty member will present a scientific seminar. (More Details on this visit are in the attached document).
Project Details
Project type
Exploratory Research
Start Date
2005-05-04
End Date
2007-06-01
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members
Related Publications
Senko JM, P Wanjugi, M Lucas, MA Bruns, and WD Burgos. 2008. "Characterization of Fe(II) oxidizing bacterial activities and communities at two acidic Appalachian coalmine drainage-impacted sites ." The ISME Journal 2:1134-1145. doi:10.1038/ismej.2008.60
Senko, J. M., S.D. Kelly, A.C. Dohnalkova, J.T. McDonough, K.M. Kemner and W.D. Burgos. 2007. The effect of U(VI) bioreduction kinetics on subsequent reoxidation of UO2. Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta. Accepted July 2007.