A biomining platform that extracts rare earth metals after transforming waste glass into high-value chemical intermediates using engineered enzymes to break down silica at ambient temperature.
If successful, the project could establish a new enzymatic approach for breaking down inert silica glass into useful starting materials at far lower temperatures than conventional glass or silicon manufacturing. In addition, rare earth metals from certain glass products would be collected , too. This will help reduce landfill-bound glass waste, support a more circular local economy, and create opportunities for regional green jobs. In the longer term, it will offer a lower-emission pathway for an energy-intensive global supply chain and expand the scientific toolkit for bio-mining critical minerals.
The project will begin by designing and testing mutated enzymes versus native species variants in cell-free expression kits with different types of glass. Silica breakdown will be quantified with colorimetric silica assays at baseline, 1 hour, and 24 hours. Based on first-round results, the top candidates will be redesigned and tested again to find the maximum catalytic rate increase achievable through genetic engineering alone. For additional reaction rate improvement, the pH, temperature, and various mechanical processes will be compared to achieve rates that support an industrial-scale workflow. Furthermore, secondary enzymes will be designed for the conversion to pre-selected silicon-based semiconductor intermediate chemicals. The collection and purification of the rare earth metals released along with the silicon-based chemical production will be developed and scaled up. Eventually, to move towards carbon-neutral manufacturing, photosynthetic organisms will be developed for the enzyme production.