Dr Ioannis Vyrides is an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Cyprus University of Technology. He has been in the Environmental Engineering Laboratory group leader since 2012. He holds a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (2005). He has a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Imperial College London, where he worked on the Submerged Anaerobic Membrane Reactor (SAMBR) to treat organic saline wastewater (2009). He has worked as a Post Doc at the Kings College London (2009-2010) and was a Visiting Lecturer at CUT (2011).

Dr Ioannis Vyrides Research lies in the field of Environmental Engineering and deals with emerging problems that the world needs to tackle in the following decades.

(A) CO2 conversion to Hydrogen and or conversion to other products.

The production of Hydrogen using an anaerobic system of zero-valent metal at anoxic CO2 conditions is examined. Then, based on mix hydrogenotrophic methanogens or mixed acetogens, the Hydrogen and CO2 can be converted to methane or acetic acid respectively. The mechanisms and the engineering potential of these reactions are examined by working in the boundary between scientific fields such as chemical and environmental engineering, anaerobic microbiology and material science.

(B) Wastewater treatment.

( B1) Addition of zero-valent metal in anaerobic digestion as a strategy to increase its performance and to achieve biogas upgrading. The reactions of zero valent metal

(e.g. Fe(0) (s) + HCO- (aq) + H2O -> FeCO3(s) + H2(g) + OH-(aq).) can be used in-situ or ex-situ with anaerobic digestion for wastewater/waste treatment and biogas upgrading.

(B2) Electrolysis cell (without ion exchange membrane) within submerged anaerobic membrane bioreactor (SAnMBR) for recalcitrant wastewater treatment (bilge wastewater).

(B3) Treatment of oily wastewater by mixed consortiums and using aerobic moving bed biofilm reactor.

(C) Phosphorus recovery from wastewater using treated biowaste as adsorption material

(C1) Thermal treatment of biowaste (eggshell, residual seagrass) for their conversation as a selective adsorption material for phosphate from wastewater or phosphorous previously leached from various waste.

(C2) Adsorption of SAnMBR effluent to biowaste-column