1799
(Science for Solving Society’s Problems Challenge Grant Winner) SPEED: Sanitation and Processing for Energy with Electrochemical Devices

Monday, 30 May 2016: 10:00
Sapphire Ballroom H (Hilton San Diego Bayfront)
G. Reguera (Michigan State University)
In Nature, highly efficient and diverse consortia of microbes process organic matter, such as agricultural and human wastes, while generating energy for growth and recycling carbon and other vital elements. Driving these reactions are organisms with the ability to extract electrons from the chemical substrates and transfer them to redox-active minerals. One group in particular, Geobacter bacteria, can couple their metabolism to the reduction of insoluble minerals such as iron and manganese oxides. This natural process can be mimicked in electrochemical devices, which provide a poised electrode as electron sink to drive the growth and catalysis of the bacteria. The SPEED technology capitalizes on the synergistic interactions between Geobacter bioelectrodes and targeted bioprocessing microbes to simultaneously sanitize and harvest energy from wastes. The partnership between the two microbes in such Nature-inspired reactors promotes the processing of agricultural, industrial, and human wastes while generating added-value products and enabling water reuse. The versatility of the SPEED technologies is illustrated with scaled-up reactor prototypes which simultaneously process human urine while harvesting energy from waste substrates as biofuels and industrial chemical precursors. Furthermore, SPEED processes can be adapted to any reactor vessels and use inexpensive electrode materials to promote the microbial catalysis. They are deployable and scalable and can be customized to adapt to the needs of the target market, from decentralized systems for sanitation and water reuse to industrial reactors for bioenergy applications.