27, NO. 5 UT Austin engineering professor wins National Science Foundation Award to study use of fungus in devices to clean polluted air Michelle Gilson College of Engineering related photo return to On Campus contents page Dr. Kerry Kinney, assistant professor in the UT Austin College of Engineering, has won a four-year National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award to study whether fungus can be used to clean contaminated air by consuming pollutants. Kinney has taught at UT Austin since 1996. VOCs are released from gasoline, paints and a wide variety of solvents. Nitrogen oxides are generated by automobiles, power plants, boilers and other internal combustion engines. When VOCs and nitrogen oxides combine with sunlight in a series of complex chemical reactions, ozone is formed.
Ozone is an important component of smog.
Kinney already has performed experiments indicating that fungi actually eat VOCs, turning them into harmless byproducts. She also will investigate how fungal growth affects the performance of vapor phase bioreactors, devices that clean the air by removing gaseous contaminants. A bioreactor generally consists of a tall column packed with ceramic beads or other type of packing material that provides a medium on which bacteria grow. Bioreactors can range in size from a column a few feet high in the lab to multi-story facilities used in industrial plants. Most bioreactor systems rely on bacteria that occur naturally in the environment.