Nitrates

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Hi, I was wondering if mycelium was capable of removing nitrates from water?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks

Phil

Taxonomy

4 Answers

  1. Mycelium helps plants absorb water and nutrients, as well as build up the immunity of the trees and plants. This is called the mycorrhizal network.   Since mycelium is a type of mold, it spreads very quickly.  In Minecraft version 1.13 and below, getting rid of mycelium was quite easy. Letting water flow over the blocks would decay the mold and destroy it. However, after version 1.13 was released, this feature was removed. Getting rid of mycelium in versions 1.14+ is hard, but still possible

    Fungus absorbs nutrients from its environment (substrate, log, etc) through its mycelium in a two-stage process. First, the hyphae secrete enzymes into the decaying wood or other substrate. These enzymes break down biological polymers into smaller units such as monomers.  Water Distillers are another way to remove nitrates from water. It easily removes nitrates and other sediments, including complex elements, by the distillation process. It is a process where the unwanted chemicals and substances are removed from water by evaporation on the water’s surface.

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  2. You can find some info in these papers: 

    Sun Y, Su J, Ali A, Wang Z, Zhang S, Zheng Z, Min Y. Fungal-sponge composite carriers coupled with denitrification and biomineralization bacteria to remove nitrate, calcium, and cadmium in a bioreactor. Bioresour Technol. 2022 Jul;355:127259. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2022.127259. Epub 2022 May 9. PMID: 35550924.

    Osayomwanbo Osarenotor, Helen M. K. Essandoh , Isoken Tito Aighewi . Removal of pollutants by mycelium-colonized sawdust. Water Practice and Technology (2021) 16 (3): 1036–1047. https://doi.org/10.2166/wpt.2021.028

  3. Mycelium are functionally aerobic. Though capable of breaking down nitrogen in most of its forms, this would be limited to being negligible in water which for most purposes should be considered anaerobic.

  4. Nitrates can be removed from water by reverse osmosis, distillation, or through ion exchange resin. Nitrates are difficult contaminants to eliminate from water. Nitrates will not be removed by sediment filters, carbon filters, or by the hollow fiber membrane of an ultrafiltration system. Similarly, a traditional ion exchange water softener will not reduce or remove nitrates. If you want to remove nitrates for the entirety of your home, installing an anion resin tank at the point of entry is the most common and effective solution. If you only want to eliminate nitrates from your drinking and cooking water, installing an under-sink reverse osmosis system is the recommended choice. You can also use a water distiller to eliminate nitrates from small batches of water at a time. 

     Reverse osmosis 

    Reverse osmosis removes contaminants by forcing pressurized water through a semi-permeable membrane covered in microscopic pores. These pores act like a sieve, separating the pure hydrogen and oxygen from the water’s contaminants. The membrane has such a fine micron rating that it can rid the water of ions, like nitrates. The clean, treated water passes through the membrane and collects in a storage tank. The remaining contaminants are rejected by the membrane and flushed down the drain in a brine solution. Reverse osmosis is one of the most powerful methods of residential water filtration and is able to reduce over 98% of waterborne contaminants. Generally speaking, reverse osmosis can specifically remove anywhere from 83-92% of nitrates. 

    Reverse osmosis is popularly used to purify water used for drinking, cooking, and ice-making. Reverse osmosis systems are somewhat complex, requiring several stages of pre-filtration, storage tanks, and sometimes a pressure booster pump to increase feed line pressure. This makes them generally impractical for whole house water filtration (except in certain, dire circumstances.) If you are only interested in eliminating the nitrates from the water you and your family will be consuming, RO is a strong choice. 

    However, keep in mind, reverse osmosis does remove all traces of nitrates, but rather greatly reduces the nitrate levels present in your water. If your well water has 30 mg/L of nitrate, an RO system would be able to reduce that somewhere between 3.5-2.5 mg/L. This is well within the EPA’s safe and acceptable range of nitrates. However, if you have extremely problematic water with somewhere around 100 mg/L of nitrates, your water would likely have anywhere from 15-10 mg/L remaining. The higher the incoming nitrate concentration is, the less effective reverse osmosis will be at making the water safe for consumption. This is why performing a detailed water test is so integral to choosing a water filtration system. In the case of such extreme levels of nitrates, a whole-house reverse osmosis system may be a plausible filtration system.