Microbial bioprospection from coal combustion products
17 10 2024
Category: IM Seminar
You are cordially invited to the Institute seminar: on Monday 21st of October at 2.30 pm. Msc Mikołaj Iwan from the Department of Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology will present seminar entitled „Bioprospection of hydrocarbon metabolizing bacteria from coal combustion products”.
Abstract:
Coal combustion products are a group of waste materials that are very complex in nature. Thus, they can find many different applications in different branches of the modern industry. One of the simpler use cases of these materials is turning them into fillers for concrete and cement production. There is, however, a problem with such applications. Namely, coal combustion products, used as cement filler, cannot contain more than 6% of unburnt carbon. This excludes huge amounts of these materials from being used in a productive manner, and results in cost- and space-intensive, long-term storage. There are some physicochemical separation methods, that are used to segregate carbon particles from other constituent. Yet, these methods demand the use of expensive infrastructure, and thus, opens up an opportunity to explore microbe-based approach to solve this carbonaceous problem. In this presentation I would like to zoom in on my trials to isolate and characterize microbes that inhabit coal combustion products containing high amounts of unburnt carbon. The aim of these efforts is to find a suitable microorganism or a group of microorganisms that will help the industry in removing unburnt carbon from coal combustion products in a cost-effective fashion and therefore improve the recyclability of the valuable waste materials that are coal combustion products.