In the scope of CBQF celebration of its 30 years is organizing a Cycle of Seminars about several topics related with the different areas of research. The 3rd Seminar titled “Resource Recovery from Municipal wastewater treatment”, will be held on April 29th at 5:00pm.
Brief Abstract
Municipal Wastewater treatment is under pressure to change from an health and environment protection service to also include resource recovery. Society, as a whole, needs to become more resource effective and wastewater treatment plants can contribute in recovery of water, energy and materials. The presentation will discuss options for resource recovery and their feasibility in a technical-economic context.
Short biography
Mark van Loosdrecht is Professor in Environmental Biotechnology at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He graduated from Wageningen University (MSc and PhD). His PhD topic was a combination of microbiology (prof. A. Zehnder) and colloid chemistry (prof. J. Lyklema). He was appointed at Delft in 1988 and became Full Professor in 1998. His research is characterized by the combination of scientific understanding of engineered microbial ecosystems and development of new processes. Scientific interests are mainly related to biofilm processes, nutrient conversion processes and the role of storage polymers in microbial ecology. In particular, he has been instrumental in the development of several new commercialized processes related to wastewater treatment and resource recovery. The research has resulted in several processes currently applied on full scale such as the Sharon process, Anammox process and Nereda process. Technologies that are currently in a commercial scale-up (demonstration scale) are production of bioplastics (PHA) from wastewater, production of biopolymers (Kaumera) from waste sludge and recovery of phosphate as vivianite.
Mark van Loosdrecht is active member of the International Water Association (IWA – distinguished fellow) and past chairman of the Biofilm and the Nutrient Removal and Recovery specialist groups. He was Editor-in-Chief of Water Research (2009-2019). He was awarded several prizes for his work, including the Lee Kuan Yew Singapore Water Prize, the Stockholm water prize and the IWA Grand Award. He is member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Dutch, USA and Chinese Academy of Engineering. He received a honorary doctorate from ETH Zurich and University Gent. He was awarded a knighthood in the order of the Dutch Lion. He has published over 850 scientific papers, has over 20 patents and has supervised over 65 PhD students.