Your dirty dishwater could soon be providing the electricity to power wastewater treatment plants if University of Queensland researchers have their way.
The UQ team has developed a technique that removes pollutants and organic compounds from wastewater and turns them into environmentally friendly electricity.
The researchers will receive $1,300,000 in funding over five years as part of the Australian Research Council`s Discovery Project Grants announced on November 9. The award was the largest Discovery Grant awarded to UQ, which received almost $36 million during this round of grants.
PhD student Stefano Freguia from the University`s Advanced Wastewater Management Centre (AWMC) said there was still more research to be carried out before the power source could be commercialised.
“Our experiments have shown that the chemical energy contained in the organic matter present in wastewaters can be recovered as electricity by using microbial fuel cells,” he said.
Microbial fuel cells are similar to common chemical fuels cells but use microbes as catalysts and can therefore utilise wastewater pollutants for energy production rather than a chemical fuel such as hydrogen or methane.
Mr Freguia is currently completing his PhD at UQ examining Power production from wastewater using microbial fuel cells.
“In microbial fuel cells the electron donor is an organic substrate and bacteria are used as catalysts for its oxidation to carbon dioxide,” he said.
AWMC Director Professor Jürg Keller said the cells could be used to generate renewable electricity to power wastewater treatment plants while at the same time removing the pollutants.
“You should be able to generate sufficient energy from pollutants in wastewater to run the entire treatment process,” Professor Keller said.
“The technology could significantly reduce the operating cost of wastewater treatment plants.”
Not only is this new power source cheap and readily available, it is also environmentally friendly.
“All of the power that is produced is from renewable sources - the pollutants in the wastewater,” Professor Keller said.
“It`s all happening in a thin biofilm, a sort of slime layer on the electrode where bacteria are growing and directly producing electrical current.”
Professor Keller and Mr Freguia are continuing their research into the microbial fuel cells and expect there to be early applications arising from the technology within five years.
“It`s a novel technology that has a big future,” Professor Keller said.
Media: For more information, contact Professor Jürg Keller (telephone 07 3365 4727 or 0412 123 913) or Stefano Freguia (telephone 07 3365 4729) Chris Saxby at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 2479, email c.saxby@uq.edu.au).
