12 Aug 2015

When a Dutch company working on soil pollution teamed up with ESA to build a better, bacteria-based air filter for space, they also created the foundation for a new way of keeping iron pipelines from corroding in the ground.
Until recently, finding corrosion on pipelines was like looking for a needle in a haystack. With thousands of kilometres of pipeline to check, companies had to send inspectors out on spot checks and hope for the best.
Now, pipeline owners can identify which stretches of soil are inhabited by corrosion-causing bacteria, and then target these weak spots.
It all came about thanks to ESA’s efforts to make sure the air in space stations is safe to breathe. One idea was to create a biological air filter. Among other partners, ESA called on Bioclear, a Dutch company focused on soil pollution.
“In a spacecraft you have a lot of contaminants that build up,” explained Sytze Keuning, CEO of Bioclear. “It’s not so different from your office. There, you have furniture and it has chemical substances such as the glue used in the desk that evaporates in low concentrations.”

While an office worker can just open a window, astronauts have no such option: “A spacecraft is a closed system. Contaminants build up.”
To solve this problem, Bioclear scientists drew on their experience working with microbiology to remove pollutants from soil. Using bacteria, they created a system that degrades contaminants into carbon dioxide and water, which could then be reused in the spacecraft. “The system recycles itself,” said Sytze. “It’s a living system, like in nature.”
However, this posed a new potential risk. What if, in addition to breeding ‘good’ bacteria, the biological air filter also started to breed ‘bad’ bacteria?
ESA and Bioclear decided that they needed to develop a screening method that could quickly tell astronauts if there were harmful bacteria in the filter. “After all, pathogens could start to grow, and then we need to be warned in an early stage,” said Sytze.

Bioclear turned to DNA analysis and created an artificial strand of a pathogen’s DNA. This artificial strand was then impregnated with fluorescent compounds. These would be coloured, say, blue. If the artificial DNA strand came into contact with the pathogen, it would bind with the pathogen’s DNA. Then, under a microscope, dangerous pathogens would show up blue.
“Already, at the time, we expected that this was a promising technique,” said Marc Heppener, who was Head of Science and Applications in the ESA directorate of Human Spaceflight and Exploration at the time, “so we were keen to validate it for the space environment in view of its many advantages.”

Image:
(Left) Oil pipe line.
(Middle) International Space Station.
(Right) Microbial growth test on Space Station.