Maria Alcina Pereira is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biological Engineering, University of Minho (UM). She received her degree in Biological Engineering in 1995, M.Sc. in Biological Engineering in 1999 and Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2003 from University of Minho. From 2003 to 2007 was a post-doctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology, UM, and in the Laboratory of Microbiology, Wageningen University, The Netherlands, within the Molecular Ecology group. From 2007 to 2008 was a researcher at the Research Institute WETSUS, The Netherlands, and since 2008 integrates the BRIDGE group at the Centre of Biological Engineering (UM) where her main research interests include microbiology and biotechnology of waste/by-products processing for value-added products and resource recovery.

Bio-electrochemically-assisted recovery of valuable resources from urine

Fertilizers are needed in agriculture to ensure a sufficient food production. The recovery of valuable nutrients (phosphate and ammonia) from waste streams will help to overcome future shortages and reduce the need for phosphorous ore imports and energy intensive ammonia production.

Urine contributes only 1% to the volume stream of conventional domestic wastewater, however it contributes to about 80% of the N load and 50% of the P load. One person produces on average 1.5 L of urine per day, which contains about 9.1 g N /L and 1 g P /L. These high nutrient concentrations in urine make it possible to develop more effective and energy efficient recovery technologies.

In the ValueFromUrine project, phosphorus recovery will be promoted by struvite precipitation from hydrolysed urine and the resulting effluent will be used to recover ammonium and simultaneously generate electricity in bioelectrochemical systems. Bioelectrochemical systems (ie Microbial Fuel Cells) are engineered systems in which bacteria catalyze the oxidation of organic substrates and transfer electrons to anodes reducing oxygen in the cathode and produce electricity.

ValuefromUrine is a collaborative research project of Wetsus, centre of excellence for sustainable water technology (NL), Centre de Rescherche Public Henri Tudor (LU), Universidade do Minho (PT), Magneto special anodes (NL), DeSaH (NL), MAST Carbon International (UK) and Abengoa Water (ES). The project is funded by EUs Seventh Framework Programme for Research (Grant Agreement No. 308535).