FAIRMONT — Five years ago, Dr. Jay Wiedemann read that the coal industry had a problem with mercury in waste water, and he later found out that selenium was also an issue.

So a team of researchers and students at the West Virginia University Institute of Technology went to a mine site in the state and collected samples of bacteria naturally occurring in coal slurry ponds.

“What I did was then I just kept on adding mercury to the bacteria, and we used that bacteria colony to convert the toxic mercury into water to pure liquid mercury,” Wiedemann, assistant professor at WVU Tech in Montgomery, said. His specialty is biochemistry.

The toxic metal is water soluble and is in the water, and typically the bacteria is packed on what is called a bioreactor, he explained.

The result of the research is a new process for making coal a cleaner source of energy, and a patent is pending. According to a WVU Tech press release, “The new technology removes 95-100 percent of the toxic mercury from the treated water, which reduces the ecological impact of converting coal into energy.”

Five or six faculty members and 25 to 30 students are involved in the project.

“We work as a team to try to solve the problem,” Wiedemann said.

The team plans to take what has been proven in the lab and conduct a large-scale field test at the coal slurry pond. Sometime this summer, the group will begin working with engineers to find the best way to utilize the technology in energy production.

“It’s actually a huge impact because new regulations for both mercury and selenium are coming up in the next five to 10 years,” Wiedemann said of the potential effects the research could have on the coal industry.

The patent deals with mercury and selenium and trying to design a bioreactor. Environmentally, this research can help clean up mercury in coal slurry ponds as well as selenium found downstream, he said.

Right now, mainly chemical or physical means — which can be expensive — are being used to separate these materials from the water, Wiedemann said. However, the biological approach is a more efficient and cheap method of doing the same thing.

WVU Tech is trying to get $1.7 million in funding to renovate a laboratory for this research, to buy and maintain instruments, and to pay faculty members to keep the laboratory running.

“The main goal is focused on hands-on experience for the undergraduate students working on research,” Wiedemann said. “I believe that undergraduates learn more in the laboratory than the classroom.”

As an effort to concentrate on the science of energy production, WVU Tech now has new curriculum in renewable energy. Wiedemann said it’s important to offer classes in this particular area mainly because of the price of oil.

“We need alternative sources,” he said. “So we need to focus mainly on coal, natural gas, oil, everything — even wind, solar.”

WVU Tech’s research and similar efforts could certainly affect Allegheny Power’s operations, said Allen Staggers, manager of corporate communications. The company is a large user of coal, burning approximately 18 million tons of coal annually. More than 40 percent of that amount comes from West Virginia, and Allegheny gets more coal from West Virginia than any other state.

The Clean Air Act deals with specific levels of emissions controls, including for mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. To comply with these rules, utilities that burn coal will be installing equipment that will remove certain chemicals from emissions, Staggers said. For example, Allegheny Power has a large construction site at the Fort Martin Power Station near Morgantown to install scrubbers to remove sulfur dioxide from its emissions.

“Cleaning the environment and burning coal more cleanly is a very important part of our business and will continue to be a very important part of our business,” he said. “Anything that makes the coal more clean before it’s burned certainly has the potential to be very beneficial to use coal to generate energy or use coal for any other purpose as well.”

Lara Ramsburg, spokeswoman for Gov. Joe Manchin, said it’s important to focus on clean coal technology, and there is a need for more research and funding.

“(Manchin) believes it should be a priority for the entire United States, because clean coal technology can truly play a significant part in our efforts to become energy independent,” she said. “As everybody’s seen with the rising gas prices, that time can’t come soon enough.”

Although research is being done on alternative sources of energy, coal is “a resource we know we have” right now, Ramsburg said. A number of colleges, universities and institutions in the state are doing tremendous research and will continue this work in the future, she said.

“Until we can get to the point where we don’t need coal anymore, which is decades from now, we need to do all we can to invest and encourage clean coal technology,” Ramsburg said. “The governor continues to fight that battle on the national front.”

E-mail Jessica Legge at jlegge@timeswv.com.