Material Futures Dissertation
I began this journey with the desire to explore whether industrial waste that has been a source of pollution can be repurposed to create something of value. On this journey, I have come to understand that responsibly cleaning up a waste system can be incredibly complex and energy intensive. In fact, the process required to clean a polluted river system may be so energy intensive and polluting that it is not viable from economic and sustainability perspectives. In the end, I created a DIY system to explore how one might extract the metals that are polluting UK rivers and have made a material representation of the industrial waste by creating a coin. I hope the coin can be a valuable way to remind people about the importance of acting to clean up legacy sources of pollution.
People imagine that a vast amount of pollution is necessary to do serious damage to the environment. It is my opinion that pollution caused by runoff from metal mines is largely invisible. There are now 1,500 km of rivers in the UK that have unhealthy levels of metal content due to acid drainage from abandoned mines. This metal pollution can have serious impacts on the local fish and insect populations, as well as the local flora and fauna which cannot thrive in an environment with soils that become metal heavy due to river runoff. Abandoned mines that date back to the Bronze Age still release metals into nearby water sources. Without an eye for a healthy ecological landscape, one might not think that the streams carrying runoff from abandoned metal mines are polluted at all. The bits of metal that are in the water are invisible to the naked eye.
At the same time, it is difficult to remediate the pollution from a mine because there is a constant discharge into the water. The pumping and draining systems that used to remove water from working mines are now no longer active. This means that the abandoned mine will overflow toxic polluted water that has reacted with the exposed metals. At this point, only remedial measures are available to reduce this form of water pollution.
Currently there are only three sites in the UK that have implemented these remedial measures, which means that there are still thousands of rivers still suffering from this problem. One common remedial measure is to create man made lagoons that ‘catch’ the metals, thereby creating a buffer system between the mine’s discharge and a water source. In addition, water treatment plants strategically located near an abandoned mine can chemically treat mine runoff before it is discharged into nearby rivers are another common remedial measure.
I want this project to highlight the misconceptions that the landscape along these rivers is healthy and that cleaning up such rivers can be more complicated than we might imagine. In the following paragraphs, I describe how I was to break down the Porthtowan river water's metal pollution and demonstrate the challenges and methods of removing the polluting metals using means available in my flat. Lastly, I describe how I materialized and created a representation of the pollution through a coin that I designed and constructed.
As a result of the Coronavirus lock down, I have had to make compromises and modify my plan of action. Limited to my London flat left me without access to tools I needed. Importantly, I could not leave my flat to go to the source of this pollution. The following paragraphs highlight the modifications and compromises that I adopted, and show my journey in understanding data and river pollution.
Prior to Easter Break, I planned to take a trip to a polluted river and collect mass quantities of water that I would use for experimentation. My goal with the experimentation would have been to extract the metals out of the river water and use them to cast a coin. At that time, I did not know what the higher or deeper meaning of the coin would be. I just understood that a coin is a universal symbol of value, and that there is a rich history in coinage that I could draw from to paint the story of the object I was creating and its provenance.
I settled on Porthtowan River, located in Cornwall. Porthtowan is a small coastal village that had a prominent mining industry in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. While the town’s mines primarily produced copper, there also were lead, zinc and tin mines in this area. I chose the Porthtowan River because it is the UK river with the greatest level of copper pollution in its water stream. And since I would be making a coin, I thought it was fitting given that copper has a long history of being a material for coinage around the world. The Porthtowan river is also polluted with zinc, lead and arsenic.
While I chose the river because of its copper levels, its high level of zinc was also ideal for my coin making. Zinc has often been used as the base metal for coins with copper then plated on exterior. The composition of metals in a coin has historically reflected the accessibility and cost of the metal. For example, the US Penny had been made completely out of copper because copper was not considered an expensive metal. Over time, the cost of copper has increased significantly, so the metal composition of the coin now has base metal that is cheaper and a thin coating of copper on its outside. For the Porthtowan River Coin, I decided I would collect the zinc first and use it to cast the coin. The Porthtowan River has six times as much zinc as it does copper. This would be perfect for my coin, because I would need a much larger quantity of zinc for its casting.
When it became clear that traveling to a river would not be a viable option (due to Coronavirus restrictions), I began to contemplate how I might complete this project entirely within my flat. I reached out to Professor Jan Cilliers, who I learned about through references in Thomas Twaite’s Toaster Project. Twaites is attempting to extract copper from the Anglesey PLC mine discharge site to make copper pins for the electric plug of his toaster. Professor Cilliers advised Thomas Twaite to use electrolysis to collect copper metal from the discharged water. I had thought about using electrolysis as well, because it seemed to be the only way to collect the metal from the river. When I contacted Professor Cilliers by phone, he suggested that I consider creating “artificial” polluted rivers in my flat by substituting quantities of inorganic compounds that would yield that amount of metal needed to plate my coins.
Before getting to the substitution of the inorganic compounds, I would like to explain a misconception that I had about metal found in polluted rivers. Last year, I completed a project in which I utilized iron oxide, a waste product from coal mines, to create patina surfaces on disks that were used as watch dials. There was a remarkable level of iron oxide in that water source. I assumed that it would be the same for the waters draining from metal mines and that there would be high levels of nickel and copper for me to access from these waters.
This assumption was proven wrong when I began to look closely at the data. Based on some calculations, I realized that the amount of metal that could be extracted from polluted rivers was actually very small. It turns out that when a river is reported to have a high level of metal pollution, it actually is a proportion that likely would appear small to most people. For example, there is an average of 1.1 g of copper per 10000 liters of water in the Porthtowan River stream. So, the silver lining is that there likely will never be metal levels in these streams large enough to create the need for copper and zinc landfills. Nonetheless, I would still need to collect/extract the metal that is in the river. Based on further calculations, I concluded that I would need to collect at least 200 liters of water in order to cast and plate a coin the size of a 50p.
To mimic the polluted river water, I used copper sulfate and zinc sulfate. Both inorganic compounds can be purchased easily on eBay, Amazon or a local garden supplies store. Copper sulfate is commonly used as a fungicide, algaecide, or a root killer, while zinc sulfate can be used as a fertilizer. To calculate how much zinc sulfate and copper sulfate to add to my 200 liters of water, I used some basic chemistry and algebra equations that I remembered from the introductory chemistry class I took in undergrad. I also ran my numbers by Professor Cilliers who confirmed my calculations.
This research informed my consideration of what would be needed to create an “at home” system from which I could test my thesis about extracting metal from a river that had been polluted with runoff from metal mines. I brainstormed, and eventually decided to recreate the polluted river in a bathtub. This solution checked all of the boxes from a practicality standpoint: It was easily accessible (and inexpensive) in London and could hold 200 liters of water.
Flash forward: I have 200 liters of water in my bathtub. I have gingerly measured the quantities of copper sulfate and zinc sulfate to yield a level of copper and zinc in the artificial river identical to that that is currently in the Porthtowan river. Using electrolysis, I collect the metals for my coin.
Electrolysis is a process in which a direct electric current is used to activate the separation of substances. Particular metals are activated based upon the current flowing from the battery. This means that if I set my current to a specific voltage I can separate and extract the metals from the river water, one by one, until I have completely separated out the metals from the water. Alternatively, I could use a higher current to pick up all the metals in the water at once. I used this second method when making my first prototype of the coin. While it worked, the appearance of plated coin is dominated by the metal that has the highest quantity in the river water. There was such a greater amount of zinc compared to the copper, so the plated coin that I created had a stormy blue gray exterior that was very dull and crusty. When I made the coin a second time, I just focused on plating the copper, with the notion that I had already proven that the electrolysis works and because, as I will explain, I would not be working with the zinc anymore in my flat.
Ideally, I would collect the zinc first and use it to cast the coin. There is one problem, however, that stood in the way of doing this. Zinc has a very high melting point. I would have been able to overcome this problem had it not been for the coronavirus lockdown. I could have worked with the technicians and tools in the Jewelry Department at University or by working with experts who have built and worked with at-home foundries. Because I was not equipped in my flat to safely implement the procedure needed to melt zinc, I needed to find an alternative metal to create my coin.
My solution was to substitute pewter for zinc. Zinc has a melting point of 419.5˚C whereas pewter has a melting point between 170 ˚C-230 ˚C depending on the composition of the pewter. Pewter is a metal alloy mostly composed of tin and is very malleable. With its low melting point I can melt and cast the metal on my stovetop. I molded the coins using my muffin tin. While this will result in large coins, it will be good enough to demonstrate the concept.
I did not go back to add the pewter to my 200 liters of water, because I already had proven that metal extraction by electrolysis is a viable process. I inserted the pewter into my design scheme as if it had already been extracted from the polluted water.
What should the coin depict? Historically, the symbols on coins typically have followed a regimented framework. I researched this by consulting a numismatist (an expert on coins) at a London coin shop. He said the front of the coin always included the portrait of the leader and that the leader looks strong and powerful in the portrait. The coin was used as propaganda to glorify the leader. The back of the coin is used to signify an event, such as one told through the roman mythology and the gods and goddesses. I will use this framework as inspiration for the designs on my coin. The back will be a revival of some sort, such as a fish or a flower that has lost a large part of its population due to river pollution.
The front of my coin resembles the lagoons. As I mentioned before, the lagoons currently store the toxic mine water. The back of the coin is a bathtub. The zig zags around the coin are to resemble the electric current that I used to separate the metals from the water. Instead of having text about a mint, I instead wrote my name, and on the back of the coin I put the coordinates of the Porthtowan River. I understand that the pictures on the coin are stylistically abstract, and you might not immediately recognize what they are, but I hope that their abstract nature will prompt one to question the coin’s materialization and pique their interest.
The process for imprinting the image on the coin is another case where the lockdown created the need for a modification. The process for imprinting the design on the coin was very labor intensive and primitive. I used a hammer and a jewelry punch and imprinted the image by making many tiny dents in the coin. After much painstaking work, the many tiny individual dents come together to form the desired image. Aesthetically, it has a different look, as the image is inverted. I have limited control, and one bad hammer strike, and the image is ruined. But I hone my punching skills as best I can and bring an image to life.
The final step after imprinting the image on the coin is to use the electrolysis process one more time to plate copper metal onto the surface of the coin. The coin is complete. It is a materialization of the land, similar to what was done by the Romans, who were the first to harness the land’s resources for manufacturing. Earlier this spring, I spoke with a coin expert who told me that a team of coin makers often accompanied the Roman army in its conquests. As soon as a new land was secured, the coin makers would extract natural resources from that land, and the coin was the first material item produced from the newly-conquered land. In contrast, however, while their coins were symbols of the power and expansion of the Roman Empire, the coins I have created symbolize what happens when economic activity is not balanced with environmental stewardship and are a call to action for remediation.
First prototypes with the coin. Final coin to come.
Change for Rivers
Final Year Project
London, UK
2020
I began this journey with the desire to explore whether industrial waste that has been a source of pollution can be repurposed to create something of value. On this journey, I have come to understand that responsibly cleaning up a waste system can be incredibly complex and energy intensive. In fact, the process required to clean a polluted river system may be so energy intensive and polluting that it is not viable from economic and sustainability perspectives. In the end, I created a DIY system to explore how one might extract the metals that are polluting UK rivers and have made a material representation of the industrial waste by creating a coin. I hope the coin can be a valuable way to remind people about the importance of acting to clean up legacy sources of pollution.
People imagine that a vast amount of pollution is necessary to do serious damage to the environment. It is my opinion that pollution caused by runoff from metal mines is largely invisible. There are now 1,500 km of rivers in the UK that have unhealthy levels of metal content due to acid drainage from abandoned mines. This metal pollution can have serious impacts on the local fish and insect populations, as well as the local flora and fauna which cannot thrive in an environment with soils that become metal heavy due to river runoff. Abandoned mines that date back to the Bronze Age still release metals into nearby water sources. Without an eye for a healthy ecological landscape, one might not think that the streams carrying runoff from abandoned metal mines are polluted at all. The bits of metal that are in the water are invisible to the naked eye.
At the same time, it is difficult to remediate the pollution from a mine because there is a constant discharge into the water. The pumping and draining systems that used to remove water from working mines are now no longer active. This means that the abandoned mine will overflow toxic polluted water that has reacted with the exposed metals. At this point, only remedial measures are available to reduce this form of water pollution.
Currently there are only three sites in the UK that have implemented these remedial measures, which means that there are still thousands of rivers still suffering from this problem. One common remedial measure is to create man made lagoons that ‘catch’ the metals, thereby creating a buffer system between the mine’s discharge and a water source. In addition, water treatment plants strategically located near an abandoned mine can chemically treat mine runoff before it is discharged into nearby rivers are another common remedial measure.
I want this project to highlight the misconceptions that the landscape along these rivers is healthy and that cleaning up such rivers can be more complicated than we might imagine. In the following paragraphs, I describe how I was to break down the Porthtowan river water's metal pollution and demonstrate the challenges and methods of removing the polluting metals using means available in my flat. Lastly, I describe how I materialized and created a representation of the pollution through a coin that I designed and constructed.
As a result of the Coronavirus lock down, I have had to make compromises and modify my plan of action. Limited to my London flat left me without access to tools I needed. Importantly, I could not leave my flat to go to the source of this pollution. The following paragraphs highlight the modifications and compromises that I adopted, and show my journey in understanding data and river pollution.
Prior to Easter Break, I planned to take a trip to a polluted river and collect mass quantities of water that I would use for experimentation. My goal with the experimentation would have been to extract the metals out of the river water and use them to cast a coin. At that time, I did not know what the higher or deeper meaning of the coin would be. I just understood that a coin is a universal symbol of value, and that there is a rich history in coinage that I could draw from to paint the story of the object I was creating and its provenance.
I settled on Porthtowan River, located in Cornwall. Porthtowan is a small coastal village that had a prominent mining industry in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. While the town’s mines primarily produced copper, there also were lead, zinc and tin mines in this area. I chose the Porthtowan River because it is the UK river with the greatest level of copper pollution in its water stream. And since I would be making a coin, I thought it was fitting given that copper has a long history of being a material for coinage around the world. The Porthtowan river is also polluted with zinc, lead and arsenic.
While I chose the river because of its copper levels, its high level of zinc was also ideal for my coin making. Zinc has often been used as the base metal for coins with copper then plated on exterior. The composition of metals in a coin has historically reflected the accessibility and cost of the metal. For example, the US Penny had been made completely out of copper because copper was not considered an expensive metal. Over time, the cost of copper has increased significantly, so the metal composition of the coin now has base metal that is cheaper and a thin coating of copper on its outside. For the Porthtowan River Coin, I decided I would collect the zinc first and use it to cast the coin. The Porthtowan River has six times as much zinc as it does copper. This would be perfect for my coin, because I would need a much larger quantity of zinc for its casting.
When it became clear that traveling to a river would not be a viable option (due to Coronavirus restrictions), I began to contemplate how I might complete this project entirely within my flat. I reached out to Professor Jan Cilliers, who I learned about through references in Thomas Twaite’s Toaster Project. Twaites is attempting to extract copper from the Anglesey PLC mine discharge site to make copper pins for the electric plug of his toaster. Professor Cilliers advised Thomas Twaite to use electrolysis to collect copper metal from the discharged water. I had thought about using electrolysis as well, because it seemed to be the only way to collect the metal from the river. When I contacted Professor Cilliers by phone, he suggested that I consider creating “artificial” polluted rivers in my flat by substituting quantities of inorganic compounds that would yield that amount of metal needed to plate my coins.
Before getting to the substitution of the inorganic compounds, I would like to explain a misconception that I had about metal found in polluted rivers. Last year, I completed a project in which I utilized iron oxide, a waste product from coal mines, to create patina surfaces on disks that were used as watch dials. There was a remarkable level of iron oxide in that water source. I assumed that it would be the same for the waters draining from metal mines and that there would be high levels of nickel and copper for me to access from these waters.
This assumption was proven wrong when I began to look closely at the data. Based on some calculations, I realized that the amount of metal that could be extracted from polluted rivers was actually very small. It turns out that when a river is reported to have a high level of metal pollution, it actually is a proportion that likely would appear small to most people. For example, there is an average of 1.1 g of copper per 10000 liters of water in the Porthtowan River stream. So, the silver lining is that there likely will never be metal levels in these streams large enough to create the need for copper and zinc landfills. Nonetheless, I would still need to collect/extract the metal that is in the river. Based on further calculations, I concluded that I would need to collect at least 200 liters of water in order to cast and plate a coin the size of a 50p.
To mimic the polluted river water, I used copper sulfate and zinc sulfate. Both inorganic compounds can be purchased easily on eBay, Amazon or a local garden supplies store. Copper sulfate is commonly used as a fungicide, algaecide, or a root killer, while zinc sulfate can be used as a fertilizer. To calculate how much zinc sulfate and copper sulfate to add to my 200 liters of water, I used some basic chemistry and algebra equations that I remembered from the introductory chemistry class I took in undergrad. I also ran my numbers by Professor Cilliers who confirmed my calculations.
This research informed my consideration of what would be needed to create an “at home” system from which I could test my thesis about extracting metal from a river that had been polluted with runoff from metal mines. I brainstormed, and eventually decided to recreate the polluted river in a bathtub. This solution checked all of the boxes from a practicality standpoint: It was easily accessible (and inexpensive) in London and could hold 200 liters of water.
Flash forward: I have 200 liters of water in my bathtub. I have gingerly measured the quantities of copper sulfate and zinc sulfate to yield a level of copper and zinc in the artificial river identical to that that is currently in the Porthtowan river. Using electrolysis, I collect the metals for my coin.
Electrolysis is a process in which a direct electric current is used to activate the separation of substances. Particular metals are activated based upon the current flowing from the battery. This means that if I set my current to a specific voltage I can separate and extract the metals from the river water, one by one, until I have completely separated out the metals from the water. Alternatively, I could use a higher current to pick up all the metals in the water at once. I used this second method when making my first prototype of the coin. While it worked, the appearance of plated coin is dominated by the metal that has the highest quantity in the river water. There was such a greater amount of zinc compared to the copper, so the plated coin that I created had a stormy blue gray exterior that was very dull and crusty. When I made the coin a second time, I just focused on plating the copper, with the notion that I had already proven that the electrolysis works and because, as I will explain, I would not be working with the zinc anymore in my flat.
Ideally, I would collect the zinc first and use it to cast the coin. There is one problem, however, that stood in the way of doing this. Zinc has a very high melting point. I would have been able to overcome this problem had it not been for the coronavirus lockdown. I could have worked with the technicians and tools in the Jewelry Department at University or by working with experts who have built and worked with at-home foundries. Because I was not equipped in my flat to safely implement the procedure needed to melt zinc, I needed to find an alternative metal to create my coin.
My solution was to substitute pewter for zinc. Zinc has a melting point of 419.5˚C whereas pewter has a melting point between 170 ˚C-230 ˚C depending on the composition of the pewter. Pewter is a metal alloy mostly composed of tin and is very malleable. With its low melting point I can melt and cast the metal on my stovetop. I molded the coins using my muffin tin. While this will result in large coins, it will be good enough to demonstrate the concept.
I did not go back to add the pewter to my 200 liters of water, because I already had proven that metal extraction by electrolysis is a viable process. I inserted the pewter into my design scheme as if it had already been extracted from the polluted water.
What should the coin depict? Historically, the symbols on coins typically have followed a regimented framework. I researched this by consulting a numismatist (an expert on coins) at a London coin shop. He said the front of the coin always included the portrait of the leader and that the leader looks strong and powerful in the portrait. The coin was used as propaganda to glorify the leader. The back of the coin is used to signify an event, such as one told through the roman mythology and the gods and goddesses. I will use this framework as inspiration for the designs on my coin. The back will be a revival of some sort, such as a fish or a flower that has lost a large part of its population due to river pollution.
The front of my coin resembles the lagoons. As I mentioned before, the lagoons currently store the toxic mine water. The back of the coin is a bathtub. The zig zags around the coin are to resemble the electric current that I used to separate the metals from the water. Instead of having text about a mint, I instead wrote my name, and on the back of the coin I put the coordinates of the Porthtowan River. I understand that the pictures on the coin are stylistically abstract, and you might not immediately recognize what they are, but I hope that their abstract nature will prompt one to question the coin’s materialization and pique their interest.
The process for imprinting the image on the coin is another case where the lockdown created the need for a modification. The process for imprinting the design on the coin was very labor intensive and primitive. I used a hammer and a jewelry punch and imprinted the image by making many tiny dents in the coin. After much painstaking work, the many tiny individual dents come together to form the desired image. Aesthetically, it has a different look, as the image is inverted. I have limited control, and one bad hammer strike, and the image is ruined. But I hone my punching skills as best I can and bring an image to life.
The final step after imprinting the image on the coin is to use the electrolysis process one more time to plate copper metal onto the surface of the coin. The coin is complete. It is a materialization of the land, similar to what was done by the Romans, who were the first to harness the land’s resources for manufacturing. Earlier this spring, I spoke with a coin expert who told me that a team of coin makers often accompanied the Roman army in its conquests. As soon as a new land was secured, the coin makers would extract natural resources from that land, and the coin was the first material item produced from the newly-conquered land. In contrast, however, while their coins were symbols of the power and expansion of the Roman Empire, the coins I have created symbolize what happens when economic activity is not balanced with environmental stewardship and are a call to action for remediation.
First prototypes with the coin. Final coin to come.