Bacterial siderophores for accelerated mineral weathering and carbon sequestration in seawater

Weathering of silicate minerals is a scalable, sustainable method for long term storage of atmospheric carbon. A rapidly growing industry seeks to enhance mineral weathering by distribution on cropland or in coastal waters or by dissolution in seawater reactors. Natural rock dissolution is too slow, however, to enable cost-efficient industrial processes. We recently demonstrated that siderophores, secondary metabolites secreted by bacteria to harvest iron, can remove iron oxides from mineral surfaces and accelerate mineral dissolution. Specifically, we demonstrated that genetic engineering of bacteria is required to produce enough siderophores to accelerate mineral dissolution in industrially relevant conditions. Now, we will determine the thermodynamic and kinetic requirements for siderophore-mediated weathering to guide the design of industrial bioreactors.