The microbiology team at Radboud University led by Dr. Cornelia Welte and Dr. Conall Holohan of RIBES has been awarded a Radboud-Glasgow Collaboration Grant. The funding in collaboration with Prof. Cindy Smith and Dr. Carlos Domingo-Felez, University of Glasgow, will stimulate collaboration and research in Microbiology across the two universities. Together they aim to advance solutions to the global and local Nitrogen crisis with ammonium-removing bacteria that can also produce electricity, through modelling and molecular methods.
Circular wastewater treatment
Global warming and nitrogen pollution are interlinked urgent environmental and societal challenges, of which the urgency is clearly outlined by the UN Sustainability Goals and EU Green Deal. Water is an important factor in these challenges and goals, and is crucial to life itself, but still wastewater treatment is linear and unsustainable. In this collaborative project, researchers will develop novel and truly circular microbial-biotechnology solutions for wastewater treatment, by proposing to use polluting ammonium from wastewater to generate electricity in a microbially-mediated manner.
Bioelectrochemical systems (BES)
The participating researchers will bring together their collective expertise across anaerobic microbial cultures, bioreactor systems, and modelling of biotechnology. They propose to define and model the fundamental molecular knowledge of anaerobic ammonium oxidising (anammox) microbes in bioelectrochemical systems (BES).
This work will be achieved through the collective use of methods in both University of Glasgow (UofG) and Radboud University (RU). Firstly, anammox cultures, unique to the Radboud Microbiology department, will be cultivated in bioelectrochemical systems to produce electricity while degrading ammonium. The research will identify the microbial community members of the BES-Anammox with molecular techniques (16S rRNA Sequencing and qPCR).
The results from laboratory cultivations will then be underpinned by a novel concept of mathematical modelling by UofG, where microbial interactions in the nitrogen-cycle are described as an analogy to electrical circuits. This approach will capture the research on the bioelectrochemistry of the nitrogen-cycle developed by RU. Simultaneously, we will train another generation of students in this field, further connecting these two established departments with direct exchange of knowledge through workshops.
Goals
Overall, this work will be a key addition in creating a shift from linear treatment of wastewater to a circular, recovery-based system, valorising ammonium in the form of electricity, for EU and positive global wastewater and climate impact.
In this project, student researchers will also be trained. Open lectures and workshops will be given by the visiting team in each location.
Radboud - Glasgow Collaboration Fund
Radboud University has been collaborating with the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK for many years. To further boost educational and research collaboration the Radboud-Glasgow Collaboration Fund was established in 2021. The collaborative fund is for joint multidisciplinary, innovative research projects, learning & teaching projects and short-term staff mobility.
