Resource recovery from wastewater with Bioelectrochemical Systems

从新的生物来源生产和回收能源和工业材料减少了我们对地球上有限的矿物石化资源的依赖，并帮助英国经济成为低碳经济。从废料中回收能源和金属等有价值的资源是一个诱人但具有挑战性的前景。有价值的物质通常以非常低的水平存在于废物中，并以高度复杂的混合物的形式存在。这使得以经济上可持续的方式浓缩和提纯它们变得非常困难。近年来，我们对微生物如何提取锁定在废水中的有机化合物中的能量并在此过程中发电的理解取得了令人兴奋的进展。这是在被称为微生物燃料电池(MFC)的设备中实现的。在MFC中，阳极上的微生物氧化有机化合物，并在氧化过程中产生电子。这些电子被传递到电路并转移到MFC阴极，在那里它们通常与氧气反应形成水，在这个过程中维持电流。理论上，MFC可以被配置成这样，而不是在阴极将氧气转化为水，它们可以将金属离子转化为金属，或者驱动有价值的化学品的合成。我们的目标是开发这样的系统，利用从废水中收集的能量从含金属的废流中回收金属，并最终从二氧化碳中合成有价值的化学品。该项目将汇集学术界和工业界的专家，设计实现这一目标的方法，并将形成一个研究计划的基础，在该计划中，从事基础研究的科学家和那些具有将实验室科学转化为工业过程的技能的人将共同努力，开发可持续的工艺，从废物中生产有价值的资源。

Production and recovery of energy and industrial materials from novel biological sources reduces our dependency on the Earth's finitie mineral petrochemical resources and helps the UK economy to become a low carbon economy. Recovering energy and valuable resources such as metals from waste materials is an attractive but challenging prospect. The valuable materials are usually present in wastes at very low levels and present as a highly complex mixture. This makes it very difficult to concentrate and purify them in an economically sustainable manner.In recent years there have been exciting advances in our understanding of ways in which microorganisms can extract the energy locked up in the organic compounds found in wastewater and in the process generate electricity. This is achieved in devices known as microbial fuel cells (MFC). In an MFC microorganisms on the anode oxidize organic compounds and in doing so generte electrons. These electrons are passed into an electrical circuit and transferred to the MFC cathode where they usually react with oxygen to form water, sustaining an electric current in the process. In theory MFC can be configured such that, rather than conversion of oxygen to water at the cathode they could convert metal ions to metals or drive the synthesis of valuable chemicals. It is our aim to develop such systems that use energy harvested from wastewater to recover metals from metal-containing wastestreams and for the synthesis of valuable chemicals, ultimately from CO2.This project will bring together experts from academia and industry to devise ways in which this can be achieved and will form the foundation of a research programme where scientists working on fundamental research and those with the skills to translate laboratory science to industrial processes will work together to develop sustainable processes for the production of valuable resources from waste.