NDSU’s Environmental and Conservation Graduate Student Organization will celebrate Earth Day with guest speaker Craig S. Criddle of Stanford University. Criddle is scheduled to present “Microbial Biotechnology for Sustainable Resource Recovery: Water, Energy, and Materials” Monday, April 22, at 12:30 p.m. in the Room of Nations
Criddle is a professor of environmental engineering and science and Senior Fellow of Woods Institute of Environment at Stanford University.
According to Criddle, use of microbial biotechnology can enable local production of water that offsets demands for imported water, production of energy that offsets demand for energy from fossil carbon and production of biomaterials that offset demands for materials made from non-renewable feedstock. He suggests the key to achieving these benefits is the informed management of microbial bioreactor communities. In the aerobic bioreactors that are commonly used to treat domestic wastewater, self-assembled microbial communities remove organics and nitrogen through energy-intensive processes. In future systems, organic matter will be efficiently removed through anaerobic biotechnology, and nitrogen through energy-efficient processes that “short-circuit” conventional nitrification-denitrification, such as the SHARON process and anaerobic ammonium oxidation (Anammox). Criddle’s research team is developing a new process for nitrogen removal, called the Coupled Aerobic-anoxic Nitrous Decomposition Operation, which generates energy from waste nitrogen by converting it to nitrous oxide. The nitrous oxide formed is captured and used to oxidize methane. Also under development are aerobic methanotrophic processes that use methane as a building block to create polyhydroxybutyrate – a high-value biopolymer that, at end-of-life, is anaerobically converted back into methane.
Criddle’s talk is co-sponsored by the Departments of Environmental and Conservation Sciences, Civil Engineering, Biology and Veterinary and Microbiological Sciences.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.
