Water, energy, materials, and food are essential for human well-being, poverty reduction, and sustainable development. Global projections indicate that the demand for these valuable essentials will increase significantly over the next decades due to rise in both human populations and standards of living worldwide. Viable steps need to be taken to renew our increasingly scarce essential resources. One option is to recover these valuable resources (water, energy, materials, fertilizers, food, etc.) from waste/wastewater. This research presents recent innovations to transform waste/wastewater treatment infrastructure into resource recovery centers by converting waste/wastewater into biogas methane and using methanotrophic bacteria to convert biogas methane into value-added products. First, methanotrophic bacteria enables removal nitrogen from wastewater and generation of nitrous oxide, a potential co-oxidant of biogas methane to increase energy production. Biogas can also be directly converted into bioelectricity using a two-step methane-powered microbial fuel cells. In addition, these bacteria can produce biodegradable bioplastic, polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based plastics that can sequester carbon and help address climate change. Methanotrophs can also produce prebiotic fish/animal foods that improve fish/animal health and enhance growth. Altogether, use of methanotrophic bacteria in waste treatment infrastructure enables production of valuable bioproducts and low-cost recovery of water.

Recovery of resources and energy using waste-derived biogas methane

256th National Meeting (2018)

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