EBNet Webinar: Bioelectrochemical Systems – from fundamentals in robotics to real world applications

EBNet Webinar: Bioelectrochemical Systems – from fundamentals in robotics to real world applications

Webinar: Thursday 20 July 2023, 10.00-11.00 (BST). Registration is now closed. The webinar video can be found here.

Invited Speaker:

Title: Bioelectrochemical Systems – from fundamentals in robotics to real world applications

Professor Yannis Ieropoulos is Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Southampton. Yannis has a background in electrical and electronics engineering coupled with communications and digital signal processing. His doctorate work addressed the challenge of autonomous robots with a biological digestion system and produced the EcoBots family of robots, powered by microbes inside Microbial Fuel Cells, fed with table sugar, grass clippings, prawn shells, rotten fruit and dead flies (amongst other substrates). Keeping practical applications as the ultimate objective of any scientific investigation enabled Yannis to address challenges of technological implementation at different scales, in different environments and fed with different feedstock substrates, going from μL wearable devices to 100’s of Litres Pee Power® urinals serving hundreds of users per day. See publications.

The organiser/chair of this event is:

Dr Sharon Velasquez Orta is a Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at Newcastle University and leads the EBNet Working Group “Bioelectrochemical Development for Environmental Technology“. She has used a multidisciplinary approach to address current world challenges in areas related to sustainability, waste biomass valorisation and effective water management, with a specific focus on understanding waste biomass transformations. She has investigated how microorganisms can enable energy production, water monitoring and wastewater treatment across multiple applications. Her research over the past 10 years has focused in the development of novel technologies such as bioelectrochemical systems (BES) for waste treatment. To this aim, she has partnered with International Universities and Companies to enable technology field testing and deployment.

This latest webinar is brought to you by the EBNet Working Group “Bioelectrochemical Development for Environmental Technology“. Contact Dr Sharon Velasquez Orta to participate.

Selected further Reading

Pee power urinal – microbial fuel cell technology field trials in the context of sanitation
By: Ioannis A. Ieropoulos et al. In: Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol., 2016, 2, 336-343

Urine utilisation by microbial fuel cells; energy fuel for the future
By: Ioannis Ieropoulos et al. In: Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2012, 14, 94-98

Urine in Bioelectrochemical Systems: An Overall Review
By: Carlo Santoro, et al. In: ChemElectroChem , 7 (6) , 1312–1331

Microbial fuel cell scale-up options
By: Xavier Alexis Walter et al. In: Journal of Power Sources , 520