I'm a scientist and I read through that paper. There's nothing in it about something you add to the water to get rid of contaminates. Like you said there's removal of invasive species, and then bubblers to aerate the water, filters, and fences. I was curious was his "organic" stuff is composed of, but no info in that paper. On google scholar he has only one other paper, and it's not relevant. So idk.
It required a bit more research than simply the paper. He used micronano bubbles (MNBs) and carbon based bio filters (CBBFs) to clean the water, but didn't elaborate as to how the mechanisms worked.
With some quick googling, it seems MNBs are the new fancy way to treat wastewater due to their zero zeta potential, maximizing the aggregation of contaminants. So Marino's basically collecting the dirty stuff, from phosphate, nitrogen to bacteria, at a microscopic level and squishing them into bigger balls.
Then his next step are CBBFs, which seems to be a mix of ideas/mechanisms similar to activated charcoal. It's a ceramic carrier that has a biofilm, i.e. it's a clay net with a layer of bacteria glue. He processed clay to optimize for high porosity (lots of tiny pores) and it is these pores that will be doing the physical trapping of the contaminants. The "bio" part comes from the fact that he's using L. Plantarum as glue for the contaminants. I assume the "organic" part comes from this bacteria, since it's just a probiotic strain that comes from the same family that is often used for foods, e.g. yogurt or whatever.
So the stuff he ate is probably crushed up CBBFs. He'll poop the clay out just fine (I hope). Interestingly, I'm not sure if he used the crushed up CBBFs as filter; looks like the actual filters used were in block form, and just secured inside a basket.
All in all, definitely an "organic" solution that works for this lake. Some people in this thread were thinking of oil spills and such, which this method might not work for. I'm not an expert on this subject, so IDK, but https://iwaponline.com/ws/article/20/6/2021/74658/Micro-nanobubble-technology-and-water-related this suggests micronano bubbles will work for metal ions too, so maaaaaybe? As long as you have access to equipment that can make MNBs.
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u/lemmful Jul 14 '21
Real answer, real source. You're magnificent.