(2025-OU12 )Life from fire? Can smouldering gas emissions support microbe growth?

Over one billion people cannot access safe drinking water. Even a robust treatment network – like used in the UK – cannot adequately protect water resources, as a recent 2022 UK parliament report revealed that not a single river in England met good chemical status (Environmental Audit Committee, 2022). This environmental contamination can be improved through more effective treatment of waste sources – particularly those with hazardous compounds, such as emerging contaminants.  

Applied smouldering has recently emerged as a scalable, energy-efficient, and economical thermal technology to treat hazardous wastes (Torero et al., 2020). Indeed, nearly 15 years of successful research and commercial activities from team members have demonstrated that smouldering systems are uniquely well-suited to manage a wide range of challenging wastes with hazardous compounds (Gerhard et al., 2020). These systems exhibit strong sustainability metrics due to their energy efficiencies and low-infrastructure requirements. However, the gaseous emissions produced from smouldering systems persists as a major knowledge gap, due to the complex mixture of gas production dynamics across smouldering conditions. These gases include beneficial compounds – such as H2 (Brown et al., 2024) – along with negative ones – such as CO2, CO, and unburned hydrocarbons (Rashwan et al., 2023).  

Breakthrough multidisciplinary research is needed to improve understanding of smouldering emissions, and sustainable pathways for emissions treatment.   

This project will leverage emerging smouldering and microbiology research at the Open University to (i) better understand emissions dynamics and (ii) understand its bactericidal properties. Future microbe-based systems may provide a sustainable pathway towards treating and potentially valorising the emissions – for example, in transforming carbon sources such as CO and CO2 into useful chemicals – such as ectoines (Cantera et al., 2022). Therefore, ongoing research excellence will be leveraged in this project to advance a novel and sustainable waste treatment strategy that addresses the critical environmental challenge of pollution (Figure 1).  

This project will focus on tracking the key gaseous emissions outputs across smouldering conditions relevant for waste applications. Moreover, select gaseous mixtures will be sampled and exposed to microbes that exhibit potential to treat or valorise fractions of the smouldering emissions to assess the emissions’ bactericidal properties. 

Project highlights

• Examining emissions from smouldering combustion to improve application sustainability; 
• An industrial placement with the world-leading smouldering company in Canada; 
• Training in state-of-the-art techniques in smouldering diagnostics and microbiology 

Methodology

A combination of smouldering and microbiological techniques will be used to further the understanding around smouldering emissions and its bactericidal properties. Smouldering experiments will be performed to track emissions across conditions, e.g., with different wastes, injected air flow rates, and O2 concentrations. Candidate wastes may be from municipal, industrial, and agricultural sources. Moreover, select emissions subsamples will be taken for microbiological investigations. The microbiology experiments will identify if select microbes can survive when subjected to smouldering emissions. Established analytical chemical techniques will be used to track smouldering emissions, including continuous FTIR and IR-based measurements, and discrete samples for GC-MS analyses. The student will have access to additional techniques at the partner organisations that can be used to identify microbial interactions.  

Training and skills

DRs will be awarded CENTA Training Credits (CTCs) for participation in CENTA-provided and ‘free choice’ external training. One CTC can be earned per 3 hours training, and DRs must accrue 100 CTCs across the three and a half years of their PhD.  

The student will be trained in specific laboratory-based techniques in applied smouldering, emissions measurements and data analysis, molecular biology (e.g., DNA extraction, PCR, library preparation, and DNA sequencing), and culture-based microbiology by members of the research team. A placement with Savron will enable participation in research, development, and deployment of commercial smouldering systems worldwide. The student will benefit from additional skills development opportunities offered by the Open University, e.g., communication skills, time management, and academic writing. 

Partners and collaboration

Gavin Grant (Savron) is an environmental technology expert, specialising in hazardous materials treatment. Savron employs smouldering technologies to eliminate environmental liabilities. The research project and placement will expose the student to cutting edge environmental technology development.  

Tim Goodall researches molecular tools to understand the composition and function of communities – combining functional and molecular analyses to improve our understanding of biogeochemical cycles, sustainability, and anthropogenic impacts. Tim is a technical lead for DNA sequencing within the Molecular Ecology laboratories, and provides training and support to students and researchers in molecular techniques and data processing. 

Further details

For any enquiries related to this project please contact Tarek Rashwan, [Email Address Removed].  

For additional details please the following profile pages: 

• Tarek Rashwan: https://www.open.ac.uk/people/tr829 
• Daniel Payne: https://www.open.ac.uk/research/people/dtp65  
• Michael Macey: https://www.open.ac.uk/people/mm34528  

To apply to this project:  

• You must include a CENTA studentship application form, downloadable from: CENTA Studentship Application Form 2025.  
• You must include a CV with the names of at least two referees (preferably three) who can comment on your academic abilities.  
• Your application materials, including the CENTA Studentship Application Form 2025, your CV and the Open University application form must be emailed to [Email Address Removed]. Instructions on how to apply to the Open University are to be found on https://www5.open.ac.uk/stem/environment-earth-ecosystem-sciences/research/phd-students/current-opportunities-and-how-apply, please ensure you read this webpage before applying as you will need to obtain the relevant OU application form from here. Please quote CENTA 2025-OU12 when completing the application form. 

 Applications must be submitted by 23:59 GMT on Wednesday 8th January 2025.