MAGICAL

Water resilience is considered imperative to safeguard access to safe drinking water and properly treated wastewater. Advanced physico-chemical and thermal processes are often used for water remediation. But they are cost and energy intensive, producing secondary toxic products. Bioremediation is an eco-friendly, nature-based alternative which, however, is a slow rate process. To accelerate the process, electro-bioremediation may be used. Mathematical modelling is used for design, optimization and automation of bioprocesses predicting their performance. But the commonly used models lack of fit and have narrow applicability, primarily because cellular metabolism is overlooked. For these reasons, MAGICAL will be focused on developing a mathematical modelling and computationally-assisted framework for designing and optimising the performance of water electro-bioremediation interpreting cellular regulation. Bioelectrochemical systems, such as ceramic microbial fuel cells (MFCs) will be constructed and operated. Waste cooking oil (WCO), an agro-industrial wastewater stream constituting a severe environmental issue worldwide, will be managed. Pseudomonas aeruginosa will be used which is an electroactive, metabolically versatile bacterium, capable of degrading WCO. WCO (electro-)biodegradation by P. aeruginosa leads to production of added-value products such as rhamnolipids, polyhydroxyalkanoates, pyocyanin and lipase which can replace their synthetic and plant- or animal-based counterparts used in various applications. These added value products are, apparently, controlled by the quorum sensing regulatory network which is highly complex. Therefore, in MAGICAL, a systematic framework will be developed to decipher the multi-layer complexity of WCO biodegradation, added-value products biosynthesis and microbial growth. While advanced analytical and biological techniques will be established to measure the WCO’s components and mRNA expression of key promoters and genes of the biosystem during MFCs operation.