Assistant Prof. Zöhre Kurt, from METU Environmental Engineering Department was awarded within the scope of the “For Women in Science” program, in cooperation with L’Oréal-UNESCO by her “Wastewater Treatment Through Sustainable Fuel Production” Project. This award is granted to six women working on materials and life sciences by L’Oréal Türkiye for 17 years to support the contribution of women in science.
Dr. Kurt’s award-winning project aims to develop a microalgae treatment system to reduce the wastewater parameter to irrigation water parameters and meanwhile produce microalgae during the process. The project focuses on natural algae growth instead of the commercial algae and harvest the produced algae by simple filtration in a continuously operatable reactors. The designed system plans to utilize the temperature of wastewater to minimize the effect of seasonal changes on algae and to increase algae yield. As the last step the sustainable system uses the harvested algae to convert it to fuel and fertilizers.
