METzero - Bringing the water sector towards Net-Zero using Microbial Electrochemical Technologies (METs)

当水在水龙头处被浪费时，我们认为水是浪费的，但很少浪费能源来使这种水成为饮用水，几乎从来没有浪费能源来处理由此产生的“废水”。在英国，自来水行业占能源支出的3%左右，估计是第四大能源用户。在废水处理领域，这一点尤其不协调：废水实际上含有的能量是目前用于处理废水的能量的10倍左右。废水处理技术在过去100年中几乎没有变化。大部分基础设施是为低得多的人口水平建造的，“处理”的重点是简单地将有机物含量降低到可以接受的水平，以排放到水道中。近年来，随着污水污泥厌氧消化以回收能源的实施，资源回收略有转变，但这是一个小的解决方案，只能回收约10%的能源消耗。目前还没有大规模的技术能够智能、可控和灵活地回收各种资源，从而实现人类水循环的循环经济。如果要在未来能源成本可能更高、天气影响更成问题的情况下保证排放标准，那么就需要新的更智能的生物技术。此外，还需要去除并理想地回收从氨到微塑料或微量金属的各种其他污染物。水务行业需要新技术来成为负责任的、响应式的服务，以满足2030年Netzero承诺和未来几十年的环境需求。微生物电化学技术就是这样一种技术，它可以帮助实现其中的一些变化，并导致对所涉及的生物过程的更好理解，以帮助开发进一步的技术。它们是一种厌氧技术，像电池一样工作，使用废弃的有机物作为燃料释放电子和质子。这些电子和质子可以是直接通过电流或间接通过氢气或有用的化学品（如苛性钠或氨）回收能量过程的驱动力。这项研究的目的是在现实条件下使用大规模复制反应堆来稳健地测试和开发这些技术。在拨款的有效期内，我们的目标是开发一种能够满足工业处理需求的反应堆，从而产生短期影响。然后，我们的目标是提高这项技术的价值，优化和试验不同资源的回收。此外，通过大规模进行严格的实验，并充分分析这些开放系统中的生物行为，特别是在启动阶段，我们的目标是建立对微生物群落形成过程的深刻理解，这将适用于其他生物技术。

When water is wasted at the tap, we consider the water waste, but rarely the waste of energy gone into making this water potable, and almost never the wasted energy to treat the resulting 'waste' water. Yeti the UK the water industry accounts for around 3% of energy expenditure, and is estimated to be the fourth largest energy user. In the wastewater sector this is particularly incongruous: wastewater actually contains around 10 times more energy than is currently used to treat it.Wastewater treatment technologies have changes little in the last 100 years. Much of the infrastructure was built for much lower population levels, and 'treatment' was focused on the simply removing organic content down to a level acceptable to discharge into waterways. There has been a slight shift in recent years toward recovery of resource specifically with the implementation of anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge to recover energy, however this is a small bolt on solution which can only recover around 10% of the energy spent. No technologies exist at scale capable of intelligently, controllably and flexibly recovering a variety of resources, closing the loop on the circular economy of human water cycle. If discharge standards are to be guaranteed in the future where energy costs are likely to be higher and weather effects more problematic then new smarter biotechnologies will be needed. Furthermore there will be a need to remove and ideally recover a wide range of other pollutants from ammonia through to microplastics or trace metals. New technologies are needed for the water industry to become the responsible, responsive service needed to meet the Netzero pledges for 2030, and the environmental needs of the coming decades. Microbial electrochemical technologies are one such technology, which could help enable some of these changes, and lead to greater understanding of the biological processes involved in order to help develop further technologies. They are an anaerobic technology that works, like a battery, using waste organics as a fuel liberating electrons and protons. These electrons and protons can be the driving force for recovery processes either of energy directly through electrical current or indirectly through hydrogen gas, or useful chemicals such as caustic soda or ammonia. This research aims to robustly test and develop these technologies using large scale replicated reactors under realistic conditions. Within the lifetime of the grant we aim to develop a reactor capable of meeting the treatment needs of industry, thus having short term impact. We then aim to increase the value of this technology optimising and trialling the recovery of different resources. Furthermore, by conducting rigorous experiments, at large scale, and fully analysing the biological behaviour in these open systems and in particular during the start-up phase, we aim to establish a deep understanding of microbial community formation processes which will be applicable to other biotechnologies.