There it was, sitting on the credenza for me to read... recommended by a colleague...a scientific paper. Its title didn’t quite catch my attention, so I almost skipped it. Wouldn't you have? The title was: Biological and Bioelectrochemical Systems for Hydrogen Production and Carbon Fixation Using Purple Phototrophic Bacteria.
Booooooring!
Nor did the first paragraph help too much:
Domestic and industrial wastewaters contain organic substrates and nutrients that can be recovered instead of being dissipated by emerging efficient technologies. The aim of this study was to promote bio-hydrogen production and carbon fixation using a mixed culture of purple phototrophic bacteria (PPB) that use infrared radiation in presence or absence of an electrode as electron donor.
But then, Science Daily, which does a good job of making science accessible, and which I recommend for project managers who like to make decisions based on fact, summarized the article this way:
Purple phototrophic bacteria -- which can store energy from light -- when supplied with an electric current can recover near to 100 percent of carbon from any type of organic waste, while generating hydrogen gas for use as fuel.
And then they really snagged me with the title:
You've flushed something valuable down the toilet today.
So what are these little purple poop-eating critters? And what do they have to do with project management and sustainability? Let’s start with the last part first. I think you would agree that if there was a way to convert human waste to energy with a zero carbon footprint and a way to generate hydrogen for the production of electricity as a byproduct, that this would launch a whole bunch of projects, in addition to the necessary research projects already underway in this area.
Now on to the critters.
They don’t really look like the image at the top of this blog post. They look more like this:
And in a container, they look like this:
You can get very smart about them from an interview by ResearchGate with one of the paper’s authors, Dr. Daniel Puyo of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Spain.
(Purple Bacteria) capture energy from sunlight using a variety of pigments, which turn them shades of orange, red or brown -- as well as purple. But it is the versatility of their metabolism, not their color, which makes them so interesting to scientists.
"Purple phototrophic bacteria make an ideal tool for resource recovery from organic waste, thanks to their highly diverse metabolism," explains Puyol.
The bacteria can use organic molecules and nitrogen gas -- instead of CO2 and H2O -- to provide carbon, electrons and nitrogen for photosynthesis. This means that they grow faster than alternative phototrophic bacteria and algae, and can generate hydrogen gas, proteins or a type of biodegradable polyester as byproducts of metabolism.
The interview goes on to say:
Our preliminary findings indicate that we are able to tune the metabolism of purple phototrophic bacteria to increase carbon dioxide fixation, while maintaining the same hydrogen productivity. This essentially means zero carbon footprint. We have recently obtained funding to design the process and patent the technology. With the technology demonstrated at lab-scale, we will try to convince the water sector about the feasibility of our technology. We have close contact with some water companies that would be interested
We are ambitious, as we know that the possibilities around the use of purple phototrophic bacteria are wide. We are aiming to go beyond wastewater treatment, directly into bio-industry. We know that the only way of achieving success with a technology focused on resource recovery is the commercialization of these resources. So we are creating an atmosphere around purple bacteria technology, including bio-industries, water management companies, and waste management companies.
Resource recovery from waste and wastewater is nothing new. We are trying to do what nature has been being doing for millions of years. Nature, in its wisdom, has selected photosynthesis as a mechanism for these transformations. We are only accelerating them.
The whole thing is actually explained very well in this video:
It's pretty interesting science, and no matter where you stand on ‘climate change’, if there’s a way to turn poop into cash, I am just flush with excitement!
Ioanna A. Vasiliadou, Antonio Berná, Carlos Manchon, Juan A. Melero, Fernando Martinez, Abraham Esteve-Nuñez, Daniel Puyol. Biological and Bioelectrochemical Systems for Hydrogen Production and Carbon Fixation Using Purple Phototrophic Bacteria. Frontiers in Energy Research, 2018; 6 DOI: 10.3389/fenrg.2018.00107
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Interesting - I really like the way you did present this post Richard. Cheers !
Glenn ChundrlekProject Manager| BelcanLoveland, Oh, United States
Thanks for sharing this, and I appreciate the phrasing. I think that this has the opportunity to help us be more efficient in our resource usage, which I think is an easier sell than trying to talk about climate change and carbon footprints.
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly 98 million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea..."
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