Blogs from the Natural History Museum
Inspiring a love of the natural world
In November, Laura Newsome, a Research Associate, and Sul Mulroy, a PhD student at the University of Manchester Geomicrobiology group, travelled to California for beamtime at the Advanced Light Source synchrotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Laura and Sul travelled to analyse samples generated from their work on the COG3 project. Sul reports from the visit.
Continue reading “Beamtime at the Advanced Light Source | COG3 Consortium”
Dr Paul Schofield gives an account of the CoG3 project’s annual Science Advisory Board meeting, held on the 6 and 7 June 2016 at the Bangor Acidophile Research Team (BART) centre, Bangor University.
The overall purpose of our Science Advisory Board is to assess and advise upon the strategic direction of the team’s project, CoG3: Geology, Geochemistry and Geomicrobiology of Cobalt. It also ensures that all components of the project stay focused on their objectives and remain sufficiently integrated so that the entire project can deliver the desired impact.
The meeting was hosted by Barrie Johnson and Sarah Smith of Bangor University. Continue reading “Annual Science Advisory Board meeting | CoG3 Consortium”
In April 2016 the CoG3 team travelled to Brazil to carry out fieldwork at the Piauí deposit. Researcher Dr Paul Schofield describes their trip:
Cobalt is a technology-enabling metal with numerous applications that are particularly essential to the ‘green agenda’. Despite cobalt being such a critical material, there is a very high risk associated with its supply.
Our project, CoG3: Geology, Geochemistry and Geomicrobiology of cobalt, aims to increase the security of the cobalt supply chain by:
One resource with the potential for bioprocessing is limonitic laterite deposits, one of which is the Piauí nickel-cobalt laterite deposit in Brazil. Continue reading “Fieldwork in Brazil | CoG3 Consortium”
Researcher Dr Agnieszka Dybowska describes a recent visit to Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility, during which the CoG3 team completed their first detailed spectroscopic analysis of laterite samples.
On Thursday 28 April we headed to Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire, hoping to carry out atomic scale analysis of a sample from the Shevchenko laterite deposit in Kazakhstan – one of the samples we’re investigating as a potential new source of cobalt.
For some of us this was the first visit to a synchrotron facility, and definitely a great experience!
Continue reading “A visit to the UK’s synchrotron facility | CoG3 Consortium”
Ed Thomas, PhD student on the CoG3 project, explains the importance of cobalt to a group of school children in Manchester.
As a Widening Participation Fellow I am often involved with outreach events encouraging school children in to science, technology, engineering and maths subjects. My workshops are usually based on an aspect of Earth Sciences that the children have come across before; the rock cycle, dinosaurs, volcanoes…
Continue reading “Inspiring the next generation | CoG3 Consortium”
At the start of a major new project involving collaboration between 8 institutions from across the UK, Rachel Norman of the Museum’s Economic and Environmental Earth Sciences division introduces us to one of the new ways the CoG3 team are unearthing cobalt, a metal of great strategic and economic importance.
On Wednesday 27 January, Museum and University of Southampton scientists searched in the Museum collections for manganese nodules.
Manganese nodules form in very deep water on the seafloor, at the sediment-water interface, and cover vast areas. They form by the precipitation of manganese minerals out of seawater over extremely long time scales. Manganese nodules grow at a rate of just ~2 mm per million years, making them one of the slowest geological processes that we know of. This means that if a nodule reaches a radius of 50 mm, it could be 25 million years old!
Continue reading “Magnificent manganese and the search for cobalt | CoG3 Consortium”