The VOC & Odour Treatment Group is offering the following PhD Fellowship
Advanced Biological Processes for the Abatement of the Greenhouse Gases CH4 and N2O: Targeting the Direct Gas-Cell mass transport and Process Microbiology--CTQ2012-34949
The project in a glance:
Today, CH4 and N2O emissions constitute a 20 % of the total greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory worldwide, N2O being the dominant O3-depleting substance emitted in the 21st century. However, despite their environmental relevance and forthcoming stricter legislation, the development of cost-efficient and environmentally friendly GHG treatment technologies is nowadays very limited. Despite biotechnologies have been consistently proven as a low-cost, efficient, and environmentally friendly method for the treatment of gaseous emissions containing malodours or industrial volatile organic compounds, the application of conventional biotechnologies for the abatement of these GHGs is nowadays severely limited by: i) their poor mass transport from the gas to the microbial community as a result of their poor aqueous solubility (especially for CH4 and in a lower extent for N2O), ii) a limited understanding of biological gas treatment processes for N2O removal under aerobic conditions (no biofiltration studies reported to date) and iii) a limited knowledge of the biodegradation kinetics of these two GHGs at the trace level concentrations typically found when treating real CH4 and N2O emissions.
The research here proposed will evaluate the potential of a new generation of high-performance bioreactors based on the direct GHG transport gas-cell (in contrast to the classical gas-water-cell transfer pathway) in order to enhance the GHG mass transport. This technology, compared to the classical approach of increasing the mass transport by increasing the energy input to the bioreactor, will benefit from either an increased concentration gradient (due to the high cell hydrophobicity or the presence of an organic phase containing the cells), larger interfacial areas for mass transport in some biofilms (fungal) and lower operating cost.
For applications, please follow the instructions given HERE.
For any question related to the project please contact: mutora@iq.uva.es (Prof. Raúl Muñoz Torre).
