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Prospects for the Application of Artificially Cultured Diatom Materials in Energy and Environment

Diatoms are a kind of eukaryotic organisms, which are common single-celled algae in nature. They are various in species, large in quantity and widely distributed. Diatoms are very small, ranging from 0.01 to 0.1 mm. Photosynthesis of diatom plants can absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, which has a large influence on global climate change. As an important biological resource, diatom is one of the main foods for fish, shell fish and other aquatic animals, and plays an important role in aquatic ecosystem and biological environment monitoring. Diatoms have special silicified cell walls (diatom frustules), which can be divided into two basic types: radiation symmetry and bilateral symmetry. Diatom frustules are unique biological inorganic materials with extremely high purity in nature and are also one of the best micro-nano biological platform materials, which have very important research significance. Diatom frustules not only enhance the hardness and strength of diatom, offering the mechanical property of its suspending, but also improve its physiological function of transporting nutrients, adsorption and adhesion, and prevent the entry of harmful substances, making it more and more widely used. At present, almost all the diatoms are grown in nature, and the most used diatom-based material is diatomite, which is a mineral formed by diatom frustules after tens of millions of years. Diatom frustules contain 98% silica, but the commercial application of diatoms is different from both diatomite and synthetic silica materials. Each individual diatom has only three components: one-third of diatom frustules, one-third of proteins, and one-third of diatom lipids. Therefore, the diatom industry would be able to solve three fundamental global problems: industrial feedstocks (diatom frustules), energy (diatom lipids) and food (proteins). Although the entire body of diatom is useful, there are technical problems such as high culture cost, difficult separation technology, etc., which cannot be artificially cultured on a large scale. In the last century, US Renewable Energy Laboratory spent more than 20 years of research, but still only stayed in the culture under laboratory conditions, leading to the suspension of the industrialization of diatoms. In the last decade, Jaw-Kai Wang, who is a member of National Academy of Engineering (USA), finally has achieved the successful outdoor large-scale artificial culture of diatoms for the first time. Considering the characteristics of wide distribution, fast growth and strong competitive advantage of diatoms, Jaw-Kai Wang operated an experimental outdoor system to produce 120 tons of dry diatom per hectare per year. Up to now, some substantial achievements have been made in the laboratory stage, some of which have been used in the pilot process or even industrial applications, as shown in Fig. 1 and described below. Based on the diatom frustules material, Dazhi Sun ’s team of SUSTech-Taili Joint Lab for Diatom Materials has developed a superhydrophobic coating with micro-nano structure on the surface, which can make the surface contact angle of the material reach 150°. At the same time, the coating has friction resistance, scratch resistance, corrosion resistance and so on, and can be prepared on a large scale. Superhydrophobic structural materials based on diatom frustules can be widely used in the fields of architecture, transportation, machinery, solar energy, aerospace, ocean engineering, communication engineering, etc. Based on the unique structure and performance characteristics of diatom frustules, Jaw-Kai Wang ’s team of Shenzhen Jawkai Bioengineering R&D Center Co., Ltd. invented a biological silicon heavy metal adsorbent for the treatment of heavy metal wastewater. Biosilicon heavy metal adsorbent is a kind of natural silicon-based mesoporous adsorption material,