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Riad: What would happen if the response to wastewater treatment was in the water itself? At the University of Science and Technology of King Abdullah, a team led by Professor Pascal Saikaly is taking advantage of the natural power of microbes found in wastewater, not only to clean it, but generate energy and create valuable resources.

Instead of trusting obsolete and intensive energy systems, Saikaly’s team is developing innovative solutions based on nature that convert the waste of a tool for sustainability. Your key technology? A microbial electrochemical system that takes advantage of how certain microbes “breathe”.

Some microbes are capable of a process called extracellular electron transfer: mobile electrons outside their cells to solid surfaces. Under the right conditions, this creates a small but useful electric current.

“At the anode, think of oxidation, basically release electrons. In the cathode, it is more like improving the electron,” Saikaly told Arab News. “You have organisms that release electricity on the side of the anode. On the side of the cathode, you have organisms that can capture these electrons.”

This process, using natural microbial activity and controlled conditions such as pH, electrodes and type of substrate, helps treat wastewater while recovering energy and chemicals such as methane.

“You are not adding any energy to the entire process, so we reduce energy consumption,” said Saikaly.

Unlike conventional wastewater treatment methods, which were developed more than a century ago and depend largely on aeration, these new systems are much more efficient. According to Saikaly, current methods require 0.6 Kilovatios-Hora of Energy per cubic meter or treated water and produce large amounts of residual mud.

“The technology we are currently using generates many residual solids,” he said. “In any biological treatment process, it produces waste. And this waste is called residual waste or sludge activated by waste, we need to get rid of it.

“This means that there is an additional cost for which we have to pay in the treatment process. Therefore, it is intensive in energy and generates many residual solids.”

The Kaust equipment microbial system not only eliminates pollutants, but, under the correct operation, can also fix carbon dioxide, transforming it into methane gas or acetate, both or what can be used as renewable fuels.

“It can operate it without microorganisms and there it produces hydrogen, or operates it with microorganisms and can generate methane gas or other types of substrates,” Saikaly said.

The goal is to simply treat waste to the recovery of valuable resources of it. “All the biotechnology we develop falls under this principle,” said Saikaly. “Try the waste with the simultaneous recovery of resources. That is our principle.”

Another innovation that the Saikaly team has developed is a technology called Microbial Chain Alargation. Designed as an alternative to organic landfill filling, this process converts food and dairy waste into high -value chemicals instead of low value methane.

“According to vision 2030, all these landfills will close and the waste must deviate from the landfills for 2030 or 2035,” Saikaly said. “This means that there is an urgent need for an alternative solution for this large amount of organic waste generated.”

Among the by-products of this process is the substance rich in proteins of Casaene-A that contains 16 essential amino acids for use in aquaculture and poultry feeding.

“We are in conversations with the Kaust aquaculture program,” said Saikaly. “And we are also in discussion with Sipchem, which is an oil chemistry company. Also because to use products to produce polymers. There is a large apply window that is a lot of braler and has a higher value than methane gas.”

The team is also behind a compact plant of mobile wastewater treatment, the Aerobic Granular Mud Membrane System, developed by the seriousness of gravity, in association with the former Kaust Mohammed Ali scientist. It treats national wastewater without the need for an intensive energy or pumping, which makes it ideal for rural or remote locations.

The system, already in use in Rabigh, Saudi Arabia, serves up to 2,000 people and is designed to process 150 cubic meters of wastewater per day.

These innovations are part of a broader impulse of Saikaly and his team to rethink how we deal with waste, not as something to get rid of, but as something to transform. And although many of these technologies are still a few steps from commercial implementation, they already show how science and sustainability can go hand in hand.

“We want to think about waste not only about treating and discarding, but as a waste that we can use to recover resources,” Saikaly said.