The concern of the international community in utilizing renewable energy sources is ever rising. The reasons are both economical (rising oil/gas/coal prices) and ecological (greenhouse gas emission mitigation). Biological methods for energy production such as anaerobic digestion or microbial fuel cells have a great potential to substitute fossil fuels. Moreover, these biological methods often utilize waste, contaminated materials or polluted environments (e.g. wastewater, solid waste or contaminated sediments), thus coupling energy production to waste minimization/reclamation.
The proposed IRSES “BioWET” project will integrate a number of advanced biotechnologies for waste-to-energy conversion. It will include anaerobic digestion of wastewater and solid waste, bio-hydrogen production from industrial wastewater and direct electricity production using sediment fuel cells. As the quality of biogas/hydrogen gas produced via anaerobic processes is crucial for further utilization as source of heat and electricity, experimental work on gas quality up-grading (CO2 sequestration and H2S removal) is included too. The project includes six research work packages and two transfer of knowledge (summer school and international workshop) work packages. Besides the research tasks, this IRSES project aims to 1) transfer knowledge between the partners, 2) explore new research lines and 3) stimulate (knowledge for knowledge) networking via support of the mobility of early-stage and experienced researchers.
The consortium consists of three partners, 2 from Europe (Institute for Chemical Technology [ICT Prague], the Czech Republic and UNESCO-IHE Institute for water Education, the Netherlands) and 1 from USA (University of South Florida [USF]). The mobility of experienced staff and early-stage researchers (MSc. and Ph.D. students) is always between one of the EU partners and the USF and is always mutual to ensure good exchange of knowledge.