The Department of Environmental Microbiology at the Institute for Sanitary Engineering, Water Quality and Solid Waste Management (ISWA) at the University of Stuttgart is delighted to announce an open position for a Postdoc who will work on: “Magnetite biogeobatteries as (eco-)engineering systems for wastewater treatment, recovery of phosphate and energy production”.

The use of microorganisms for wastewater treatment is exceptionally effective and, therefore, one of the most widely used approaches today. This project aims to develop a novel approach for biological wastewater treatment by applying magnetite biogeobatteries for ammonium removal, phosphorous recovery and simultaneously producing methane, which can be recovered for green energy generation.

The postdoc project will enrich cultures of anaerobic Fe(III)-reducing ammonium-oxidizing (Feammox) and methanogenic microorganisms from different samples of the wastewater treatment plant located at our institute. Feammox and methanogens will perform autotrophic metabolisms (fixing CO2 and producing methane, respectively) and use magnetite as biogeobattery in the newly established cultures. In a second step, a continuous cultivation approach will be established to scale-up the new enrichment cultures with magnetite.