Advanced materials are essential to the quality of modern day life, but the synthesis of these compounds is often inefficient in terms of energy, time and resources; especially when considering the hydrothermal batch methods used to prepare many such compounds – often requiring week-long reaction times with variable yields and product quality. In contrast, Continuous flow synthesis (CFS) provides a more readily scalable means for the efficient, effective and reproducible synthesis of inorganic compounds. This publication demonstrates the novel CFS of several metal ammonium phosphates and compare the effect of synthesis route on particle size, size distribution, and crystallinity.

Genesis of Pure Se(0) Nano- and Micro- structures in Wastewater

Rhodopseudomonas palustris: A biotechnology chassis.

Fluid-like electrodes and Purple Phototrophic Bacteria: bridging the gap in wastewater biorefineries

Enhanced degradation of azo dyes wastewater by S-scheme heterojunctions photocatalyst g-C3N4/MoS2 intimately coupled Rhodopseudomonas palustris with chitosan modified polyurethane sponge carrier

The climate crisis requires rethinking wastewater treatment to recover resources, such as nutrients and energy. In this scenario, purple phototrophic bacteria (PPB), the most versatile microorganisms on earth, are a promising alternative to transform the wastewater treatment plant concept into a biorefinery model by producing valuable protein-enriched biomass. PPB are capable of interacting with electrodes, exchanging electrons with electrically conductive materials. In this work, we have explored for mobile-bed (either stirred or fluidized) cathodes to maximize biomass production. For this purpose, stirred-electrode reactors were operated with low-reduced (3.5 e−/C) and high-reduced (5.9 e−/C) wastewater under cathodic polarization (−0.4 V and –0.8 V vs. Ag/AgCl). We observed that cathodic polarization and IR irradiation can play a key role in microbial and phenotypic selection, promoting (at –0.4 V) or minimizing (at –0.8 V) the presence of PPB. Then, we further study how cathodic polarization modulates PPB biomass production providing a fluid-like electrode as part of a so-called photo microbial electrochemical fluidized-bed reactor (photoME-FBR). Our results revealed the impact of reduction status of carbon source in wastewater to select the PPB photoheterotrophic community and how electrodes drive microbial population shifts depending on the reduction status of such carbon source.

/pdf/fluid-like-cathode-enhances-valuable-biomass-production-from-3gm0s33r.pdf

María Verónica Beligni

Papers

Electrochemistry of R. palustris Azul during phototrophic growth