17th Jan. 2023 | And the winner is…
… our colleague Yamini Mittal, congratulations!
Her image “Bee Eco-Friendly” was selected as the most original idea among 180 competitors!
Your submission features an electron micrograph of a honeycomb-like, three-dimensional structure showing a small section of a Canna Indica plant processed into biochar. The real size of the enlarged image section is 0.01 mm. The plant has been successfully used by our engineers in constructed wetlands for many years. The stems of the plant, which are interspersed with capillaries, introduce atmospheric oxygen into the substrate, where they promote biological, aerobic water purification processes. The charred plant material, when used as substrate, also shows excellent effects in wastewater treatment. These systems are called “constructed wetland integrated microbial fuel cells” – CW-MFC. See also https://janisch-schulz.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/first-study-on-CW-MFC.pdf.
According to Yamini Mittal, the photograph reflects how “nature harmonizes creation and destruction, containing seeds of its own solution.”
To the contest: www.nanoartography.org/2022
9th Nov. 2022 | Each vote counts!
As part of her research on electroactive wetlands, our colleague Dr. Yamini Mittal created this pretty graphic of an activated charcoal granule. The graphic has been selected as a finalist for the “nanoartography” contest and now it’s up to you to promote the artwork to 1st place with your likes on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CkOwTFxPRbF/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Thank you for your support!
9th August 2022 | pilot plant for an Electroactive Wetland
Constructed wetlands (CWs) are one of the conventional technologies for wastewater treatment which is acknowledged as an aesthetic and eco-friendly technology to promote ecological balance. It has furthermore been widely adopted as decentralized secondary wastewater treatment technology in several parts of the globe. However the large land area requirement of CWs for sewage treatment of 4-5 m2 per person restricts their implementation in the cities and urban communities.
To address this issue the Indian scientist Dr. Asheesh Kumar Yadav has introduced a novel integrated biological wastewater treatment technology called Constructed Wetland Integrated Microbial Fuel Cells (CW-MFCs) in 2010. This merger was possible due to similar stratified gradients in both CWs and MFCs, which means presence of atmospheric oxygen in upper substrate layers (aerobic region) and absence of oxygen in the bottom part (anaerobic region). The conductive material acts as an electron acceptor in the oxygen-deficient lower regions, thus accelerating the biochemical processes of degradation. Further these electrons are collected with the help of solid charge collectors as shown in below figure from the lower region (anode) and transferred to upper region (cathode) through the help of copper wire. In the upper region these electrons are reduced to H2O by reacting with available atmospheric oxygen. In this whole process of electron transfer we can also harvest bioelectricity (see below figure). Thus, this new approach not only reduces the area requirement of CWs by at least one half but also it has the ability to produce bioelectricity. In recent years CW-MFCs have been well documented at lab level, but there has been little depth in pilot experimentation.
Currently, Janisch & Schulz are planning to set up a pilot scale electroactive wetland unit in collaboration with Dr. Asheesh and his Ph.D. student Ms. Yamini Mittal at a longtime customer of the engineering company. We are very grateful to all involved in the cooperation. This experiment will further help in making a comparative assessment of treatment performance between electroactive wetlands with conventional constructed wetlands in real field.
Detailed information about the CW-MFC technology (constructed wetlands-microbial fuel cell / electroactive wetlands) can be found in this study:
