HEИндивидуална стипендия2024–2026

Inlight · Process intensification towards sustainable wastewater treatment with phototropic biofilms

„Хоризонт Европа“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2024-02-01 → 2026-01-31
Финансиране от ЕС: 203 464 €
Участници: 2
Схема: HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Фототрофните биофилми, съставени от водорасли и бактерии, се изследват за производство на кислород чрез светлина при пречистване на отпадни води. Това помага за намаляване на огромния разход на енергия и вредните емисии, причинени от механичното аериране в пречиствателните станции.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Process intensification towards sustainable wastewater treatment with phototropic biofilms

Wastewater treatment is essential for public health and environmental protection, yet conventional treatment technologies rely heavily on mechanical aeration, which consumes large amounts of energy and leads to substantial greenhouse gas emissions. Aeration alone can account for up to 70% of the operational energy demand of modern wastewater treatment plants. Reducing this energy demand while maintaining high treatment efficiency is a key priority for the European Union, in line with the Water Framework Directive and EU climate neutrality goals. This project addresses the challenge by exploring light-driven wastewater treatment using photogranules, which are compact microbial aggregates composed of phototrophic microorganisms, such as algae and cyanobacteria, and heterotrophic bacteria. In these systems, phototrophs use light to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, which is then consumed by heterotrophic bacteria for wastewater treatment, potentially eliminating the need for mechanical aeration. The overall objective is to improve the fundamental understanding of the relationship between light absorption by photogranules and their oxygen production to provide a scientific basis for designing energy-efficient systems. By combining concepts from chemical engineering, microbiology, and photophysics, the project aims to identify the conditions under which these light-driven processes can contribute to more sustainable wastewater treatment at larger scales, creating a pathway toward energy-neutral water infrastructure.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Improving current biological wastewater treatment (WWT) plants towards more sustainable solutions is a priority of the EU (Water Framework Directive). Conventional activated sludge technology faces some challenges such as high O2 demand and inevitable CO2 emissions. Phototropic microorganisms offer a sustainable way of WWT by converting CO2 to O2 and valuable biofeedstock which can further be converted to bioenergy. Photogranules are compact spherical biofilms which contain high amounts of phototrophs in addition to heterotrophs. As a result, photogranule based WWT can couple CO2 and O2 fluxes from different microorganisms leading to an aeration free WWT. However, to utilize the true potential of this technology, revolutionary reactor designs together with more fundamental understanding on photogranulanation is needed. This work aims to intensify photobioreactors for WWT by using a multidisciplinary approach which combines microrhelogy and microbiology with mass and photon transport models. To have more control over growth and light, novel supports for biofilms will be designed. In addition, the project will explore the relationship between environmental conditions such as light availability and shear on microbial community composition and structure in complex phototropic biofilms by both microfluidic experiments and mathematical models. The information obtained from these studies will be translated to a macroscopic level using simplified transport phenomena models to design an efficient photobioreactor. The findings of this study will both advance our understanding of phototropic biofilms and pave the way towards industrial-scale sustainable WWT. With this project, I am aiming to combine my background on design and modelling of light-driven multiphase systems with the distinguished expertise of the host research group in WWT at TU Delft while acquiring further knowledge on mass transfer in photobiofilms during my secondment at ETH Zurich.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT · DelftКоординаторНидерландия
EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH · ZuerichШвейцария