Yang Yifan, an undergraduate student from Class of 2021 majoring in Chemical Engineering at Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT), published an academic article titled "Biochemical composite material using corncob powder as a carrier material for ureolytic bacteria in soil cadmium immobilization" in the Journal of Science of the Total Environment as the co-first author. Varenyam Achal, professor of Environmental Engineering Program at GTIIT, is the corresponding author of this article.

This study mainly focused on a biochemical composite material (BCM) formed by loading a strain of ureolytic bacteria isolated from heavy metal contaminated soil to the corncob powder as carrier, and examining its ability of facilitating microbially-induced calcite precipitation (MICP) while immobilizing exchangeable heavy metal contained compounds in soil. Specifically, the mechanism of such biochemical composite material in immobilizing heavy metals and its superiority in comparison with other composite materials were studied. 

This research can be applied to sites of soil contaminated by heavy metals, such as e-waste disposal sites, mines, etc., and has the potential to help purify soil and promote crop growth in contaminated farmland.

Yang Yifan said that out of interest in biological experiments, after learning that Prof. Varenyam Achal's research field was related to microbiology, he took the initiative to contact Prof. Varenyam Achal in the summer vacation of his junior year and expressed his intention to join the project. He then began the research under the guidance of his doctoral student Li Weila. "I was mainly responsible for a small part of the experimental design, and completed all the experimental process, data analysis, summary and paper writing together with Weila. I encountered some difficulties in the process. In the early stage of urease activity testing, I often contacted with toxic reagents. Later, some experiments are time-consuming and require a lot of aqua regia, which consumes energy."

At present, Yang Yifan is still working as a research assistant in Prof. Varenyam Achal's laboratory at GTIIT. He will start his postgraduate studies at Wageningen University in January, 2022.

Science of the Total Environment is an international multi-disciplinary journal for publication of novel, hypothesis-driven and high-impact research on the total environment, which interfaces the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and anthroposphere. With an impact factor of 7.963 in 2020, this journal belongs to Region 1 of Environmental Sciences in SCI of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Region Q1 of JCR.

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Text/Photos: GTIIT News & Public Affairs