Abstract: The blue mussel Mytilus edulis is a widespread and abundant bivalve species along the North Sea with high economic and ecological importance as an engineer species. The shell of mussels is intensively colonized by microbial organisms that can produce significant quantities of nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent greenhouse gas. To characterize t...
Source separation and decentralized urine treatment can cut costs in centralized wastewater treatment by diverting 80% of the nitrogen load in sewage. One promising approach for nitrogen removal from source-separated urine is partial nitritation/anammox (PN/A), reducing the aeration demand by 67% and organic dosage by 100% compared to nitrification...
In regions with intensive livestock production, managing the environmental impact of manure is a critical challenge. This study, set in Flanders (Belgium), evaluates the effectiveness of integrating process intensification measures into the treatment of piggery manure to mitigate nitrogen (N) surplus issues. The research investigates the techno-eco...
The advancement of regenerative life support systems (RLSS) is crucial to allow long-distance space travel. Within the Micro -Ecological Life Support System Alternative (MELiSSA), efficient nitrogen recovery from urine and other waste streams is vital to produce liquid fertilizer to feed food and oxygen production in subsequent photoautotrophic pro...
A number of existing and emerging technologies can recover nitrogen from urine. A preliminary step in many nitrogen recovery processes is hydrolyzing urea to ammonium, a biologically-mediated process that can take days to weeks without intervention. The ability to achieve urea hydrolysis quickly and reliably would increase the feasibility of decent...
The treatment and reuse of hygiene wastewater is crucial to "close the loop" in the controlled ecological life support system (CELSS), and to guarantee longer space missions or planetary habitation. In this work, anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) was applied for hygiene wastewater treatment, focused on surfactant degradation and microbial commu...
The increase in energy and fertilizer consumption makes it necessary to develop sustainable alternatives for agriculture. Anaerobic digestion and digestates appeared to be suitable options. However, untreated digestates still have high water content and can increase greenhouse gas emissions during storage and land application. In this study, manure...
Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) input is known to alter the soil microbiome, but how N enrichment influences the abundance, alpha-diversity and community structure of N-cycling functional microbial communities in grass-lands remains poorly understood. Here, we collected soils from plant communities subjected to up to 9 years of annual N-addition (10 g N...
This study pioneers the feasibility of cost-effective partial nitritation/anammox (PN/A) in packed-bed trickling filters (TFs). Three parallel TFs tested different carrier materials, the presence or absence of bottom ventilation openings, hydraulic loading rates (HLR, 0.4-2.2 m3 m- 2 h-1), and free ammonia (FA) levels on synthetic me-dium. The inex...
Microalgae can play a key role in the bioeconomy, particularly in combination with the valorisation of waste streams as cultivation media. Urine is an example of a widely available nutrient-rich waste stream, and alkaline stabilization and subsequent full nitrification in a bioreactor yields a stable nitrate-rich solution. In this study, such nitri...
