No 154: Today I was a Moroccan research scientist. Tomorrow I will be a Spaniard.

Late last Friday my phone rang. It was my good friend Frank Rogalla, Head of Innovation at Aqualia in Spain. He sounded agitated.  ‘Are you going to the IWA Congress in Brisbane next week? Can you do me a favour?’ As it happens I was just boarding a plane in SE Asia for Australia where I was scheduled to spend a couple of days at the Congress. ‘Of course’ I replied, somewhat foolishly.

Frank is the leading a glorious research project investigating whether it is possible generate energy from wastewater by growing microalgae and then feeding the harvested algae into an anaerobic digester. The project started in the laboratory back in 2010, has worked its way through pilot and prototype testing, and there is now a 2 hectare demonstration scale site, complete with a 2300m3 digester, being constructed in Southern Spain.

It is a fantastic project, involving Aqualia (Spain), the Univ of Southampton (UK), the Fraunhofer Institute (Germany), BDI (Austria), Hygear (the Netherlands) and, slightly left field, Volkswagen (Germany). Two papers were due to be presented at the IWA Congress but for various last-minute reasons neither speaker could make it. Could I, Frank asked, step in and help?

Now what I know about algae can be written on the back of a matchbox. Or rather, what I knew about algae last Friday could be written on a matchbox. A crash course over the weekend (what else would one want to do when faced with a sunny weekend in beautiful Brisbane?), combined with a couple of calls with Frank brought my knowledge to a level where I felt I might just about do justice to the hard work done by others and (perhaps more importantly) not look a complete fool.

My back up plan, much like the one I use every day, was to resort to egotistical showmanship if things got a bit sticky.

So today I was Dr Zouhayr Arbib, a distinguished Moroccan research scientist. I presented his work, which shows that you can indeed generate lots of energy using their method. Rather than consuming 0.5kw of power to treat a m3 of sewage you can generate 3kw. That is truly impressive. I wallowed in the glory that came from the audience and even managed to field the (8!) questions, subtly choosing to talk about the biogas generation part of the project (which I know and understand) rather than the algae harvesting (which I don’t).

Tomorrow I will be Dr Ignacio de Godas and I will be presenting his work. I am particularly looking forward to explaining the slide that has the following equation on it:

My back-up strategy may need to be more refined than that of today. Adopting a bit of distracting showmanship isn’t going to be enough. Instead I shall assume a strong Spanish accent, possibly with a Catalonian lisp. I will be fiery and passionate and act in accordance with such a sweepingly Mediterranean stereotype that no one will dare ask me anything difficult. Wish me luck.