Environmental biotechnology

When modern industrialization started in the 19th century, many people migrated from the agricultural area to the big cities. Public hygiene became a major problem. Human excrement and waste was discharged into open channels, rivers, and lakes. The pollution was disastrous and hygiene-related epidemic diseases, like cholera and typhus, occurred frequently. Therefore, it was an important step forward when public water collection systems and treatment plants were introduced at the end of the 19th century. 

A schematic flow diagram of a wastewater treatment plant is shown in Figs. 9.9 to 9.12. In primary physical treatment, solid material is separated from the liquid by screens, settling tanks, and skimming devices. This removes about 50 percent of the pollutants. The remaining organic material is subjected to biological treatment. 

Most of the solid collected in the primary and secondary treatment steps are transferred to the digester. This is an anaerobic fermentation 

Fermentation is also used to treat industrial chemical or organic waste. The principle is very similar to the described anaerobic sludge treatment. That means that the organic material is converted to methane. Examples include waste containing cotton, rubber, plastics, fats, explosives, and detergents. The waste can be transferred to special treatment plants or be treated in situ in the open field where the waste was buried. Open-field microbiological treatment of spills or deposits of hazardous chemicals is a potentially attractive and inexpensive remediation method and has attracted a lot of research attention. So far, however, only a few examples have been successful. 

Another example of the application of fermentation is the removal of organic compounds from exhaust air. Such biofilters are often trickle-bed reactors, in which the microorganisms grow on a solid support, such as wood chips or porous stones. Water is trickled through the reactor, whereas the exhaust air flows in the opposite direction. The bacteria digest the organic components and destroy odor-causing chemicals. Biofilters are applied in municipal wastewater treatment, food production, paint, paper, and timber industries or soil remediation. They provide an attractive alternative to thermal, chemical, and adsorptive processes for cost-effective treatment of air pollutants. 

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Advanced Environmental Biotechnology Research Center, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 790-784, Korea... 

This work was financially supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation through the Advanced Environmental Biotechnology Research Center at POSTECH. 

Dept, of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Environmental Biotechnology National Core Research Center, Environmental and Regional Development Institute, Gyeongsang National University, Kajwa-dong 900, Jinju, Gyeongnam 660-701, Korea... 

This research was supported by the grant from the MOST/KOSEF to the Environmental Biotechnology National Core Research Center (grant R15-2003-012-02002-0), Korea. 

Hussein, H., Ibrahim, S.F., Kandeel, K., and Moawad, H., Biosorption of heavy metals from wastewater using Pseudomonas sp., Environmental Biotechnology, 7 (1), 2004. 

Rittmann, B.E. and McCarty, P.L., Anaerobic treatment by methanogenesis, in Environmental Biotechnology Principles and Applications, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2001, pp. 573-579. 

Environmental Biotechnology Unit Institute of Ecology Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico... 

Gibson, D.T. and Parales, R.R. (2000) Aromatic hydrocarbon dioxygenases in environmental biotechnology. Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 11, 236-243. 

Rittmann BE (2006) Microbial ecology to manage processes in environmental biotechnology. Trends Biotechnol 24 261-266... 

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Tobin JM, White C, Gadd GM (1994) Metal accumulation by fungi applications in environmental biotechnology. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 13 126-130... 

Erom an applied environmental biotechnology point of view this lack of fundamental microbiology knowledge results in poorly understood system characteristics and inferior or unpredictable performance. A solution for this dilemma, employed in several laboratories, inclnding ours, is the assembly of controlled mixed cultures, in which... 

Kovacs, K. L. and Polyak, B. (1991) Hydrogenase reactions and utilization of hydrogen in biogas production and microbiological denitrification systems. Broc. 4th IGT Symp. on Gas, Oil, and Environmental Biotechnology, Colorado Springs, Chapter 5, pp. 1-16. 

This direction of environmental biotechnology is known as soil bioremediation. There are many options in the process design described in the literature [7,28,29]. 

Moo-Young, M. Anderson, W.A. Chakrabarty, A.M. Eds. Environmental Biotechnology Principles and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers Dordrecht, 1996. 

Evans, G.M. Furlong, J.C. Environmental Biotechnology Theory and Applications John Wiley Sons, Ltd. Chichester, 2003. 

Rittman, B. McCarty, P.L. Environmental Biotechnology Principles and Applications McGraw-HiU Boston, 2002. 

Center for Environmental Biotechnology and Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37932... 

Fundamental components for a research agenda leading to the development of effective Environmental Biotechnology for hazardous wastes... 

These have been somewhat limited examples of the contribution of new molecular methods in developing environmental biotechnology for hazardous wastes. Collectively, these and other developing methods such as highly sensitive biochemi< detection techniques will provide revolutionaiy new ways to analyze the complexity, activity, and performance of biodegradative processes in the environment and in waste treatment technology. 

Frank Thunecke, Ph.D. Environmental Biotechnology Centre, UFZ Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany... 

Department of Environmental Biotechnology, Graz University of Technology, Petersgasse 12, 8010 Graz, Austria e-mail guebitz tugraz.at... 

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