Event
【GIR Open Seminar】 Dr. George Wells / Northwestern University (U.S.A.)
| Date | 2025.12.17 (16：30 - 17：30) |
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| Venue | |
| Speaker | Dr. George Wells |
| Affiliation | Northwestern University (U.S.A.) |
| Title | "Towards a Circular Nitrogen Bioeconomy: Outside the Box Approaches for Sustainable Nutrient Management, Nitrogen Recovery, and Nitrous Oxide Mitigation from Wastewater " ＜Abstract＞ Human alteration of the nitrogen (N) cycle via the Haber-Bosch process, intensive crop cultivation, and fossil fuel use has approximately doubled the rate of N input to the terrestrial environment. Loss of anthropogenic N in municipal wastewater and urban and agricultural runoff results in an array of environmental and public health problems, including emissions of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O), eutrophication of nutrient-limited water bodies, and direct adverse effects to human health. N2O emissions and energy-intensive operation are hallmarks of conventional wastewater treatment plant bioreactors that rely on diverse microbial functional groups to remove reactive N from wastewater. However, the last two decades has seen the emergence of several novel microbial ‘players’ in the global biogeochemical N cycle that may facilitate entirely new approaches to energy efficient bioprocesses for nutrient removal, and eventually recovery, with minimal greenhouse gas emissions. In this talk, I will detail our ongoing work to deepen understanding of the microbial world in order to inspire innovations in environmental bioprocess engineering, with a particular focus on N removal and recovery. First, I will introduce an emerging paradigm in which societal waste streams are viewed not as costly energy sinks but as feedstocks for energy or resource recovery. Next, I will detail our efforts to identify and address key barriers to nutrient recovery and to expand the product portfolio for N recovery. I will then highlight cyanophycin, an underexplored N-rich microbial biopolymer, as a promising target for N recovery. Finally, I will present a novel bioprocess for microbial production and capture of N2O as a source of bioenergy, with concurrent recovery of phosphorus as a fertilizer. Meta-omic analyses of the underlying bioprocess microbiome revealed a surprisingly high prevalence of incomplete denitrification pathways, with far reaching implications for understanding microbial N2O production and metabolic division of labor in engineered and natural systems. Taken together, our results demonstrate the utility of coupling fundamental microbial ecology research to development of novel microbial bioprocesses for nutrient pollution prevention, environmental stewardship, and resource recovery. |
| Language | English |
| Intended for | Everyone is welcome to join |
| Organized by | Institute of Global Innovation Research, Global Research Hub, "Research Center for Nitrogen and Phosphorus Upcycling" |
| Contact | Institute of Global Innovation Research, Institute of Agriculture Prof. Akihiko Terada Email: akte(at)cc.tuat.ac.jp |
| Remarks | This seminar will only be held face-to-face.
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