Team:Virginia/Description
Description
All over the world, people need a place treat their wastewater so that dirty water does not pollute rivers or lakes and harm the wildlife. Wastewater treatment plants are very large operations that are costly and difficult to maintain. Our team researched ways to improve treatment plant operations so that they are more energy efficient.
Although wastewater treatment facilities can vary place to place, every facility has three main steps: primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary step removes solid objects such as twigs or trash from water by passing the water through a screen. In the secondary step, bacteria works to break down organic matter. Finally, bacteria removes nitrogen and phosphorus in the tertiary step. After investigating into further into wastewater treatment processes, we saw an opportunity to make the tertiary process more easily manageable and energy efficient.1
During the tertiary step of the wastewater treatment process, nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are removed by employing an activated sludge process. Activated sludge contains a multi-culture of bacteria that facilitate the nitrification-denitrification circuit responsible for the removal of ammonia. One type of bacteria performs a nitrification process while the other performs a denitrification process.
We specifically examined a co-culture consisting of Nitrosomonas europaea and Paracoccus denitrificans as they are two of the most commonly used species in activated sludge. In this particular co-culture system, there are issues with maintaining a consistent level of N. europaea, resulting in a constant fluctuation of the ratio of nitrifiers and denitrifiers. This is largely due to competition between the N. europaea and P. denitrificans in aerobic environments where P. denitrificans, a facultative anaerobe, can outcompete N. europaea. Additionally, N. europaea cannot thrive in hypoxic conditions. To ensure the maintenance of N. Europaea at optimal levels, treatment plants must expend more energy for aeration.
Our solution is to eliminate the use of a co-culture and implement the nitrification-denitrification circuit into one chassis. We will express nitrification pathway from N. europaea in P. denitrificans. This solution will eliminate the competition in the co-culture, making the management of the bacteria culture significantly simpler. It will also make the system more energy-efficient due to less oxygenation of the water being required. Our team plans to a reduction of cost analysis for our device compared to the multi-culture currently being used in wastewater treatment facilities.
Our project involves characterizing several new parts that have never been used in iGEM before. These include a new chassis (P. denitrificans) and two new promoters (Nar and Sod). Additionally, we will be looking into the function HaoB, a protein of unknown function that is associated HaoA (a big player in the nitrification pathway).
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