CCESEM2019 was successfully taken place on September 20-22,2019 in Beijing, China！    

【Welcome Speech】

The conference has officially begun as the Dean of the School of Civil Engineering of the North China 

University of Technology delivered a welcome speech and wished the conference a complete success. 

【Keynote Speechs】

                                                                                   Prof. Xin Wang

                                                                             Nankai University, China

Title：The Electroactive Biofilm and Its Novel Applications

Abstract：Nitrate-N in wastewaters is hard to be recovered because it is difficult to volatilize with an opposite charge to ammonium. Here, we proved the feasibility of dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonia (DNRA) by the easy-acclimated mixed electroactive bacteria, achieving the highest DNRA efficiency of 44 %. It was then coupled with microbial electrolysis to concentrate the ammonium by a factor of 4 in the catholyte for recovery. The abundance of electroactive bacteria in the biofilm before nitrate addition, especially Geobacter spp., was found to determine the DNRA efficiency. As the main competitors of DNRA bacteria, the growth of denitrifiers was more sensitive to C/N ratios. DNRA microbial community contrarily showed a stable and recoverable ammoniation performance over C/N ratios ranging from 0.5 to 8.0. A strong competition of electrode and nitrate on electron donors was observed at the early stage (15 d) of electroactive biofilm formation, which can be weakened when the biofilm was mature on 40 d. Quantitative PCR showed a significant increase in nirS and nrfA transcripts in ammoniation process. nirS was inhibited significantly after nitrate depletion while nrfA was still up-regulated. These findings provided a novel way to recover nitrate-N using the organic wastes as both electron donor and power, which has broader implications on the sustainable wastewater treatment and the ecology of nitrogen cycling.

                                                                                 Prof. Jian-Guo Dai 

                                                           The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China

Title：Preventive Maintenance of Concrete Structures through Multiple Functional Coating

Abstract：Aging of reinforced concrete (RC) structures has become an increasingly important issue worldwide. A large number of them are currently facing serious deterioration from processes such as steel corrosion and concrete spalling. The issue of how to maintain these existing and improve the durability of newly constructed concrete structures has become a grand challenge to the sustainability of social infrastructures in mainland China as well as the rest of the world. Among the many existing maintenance technologies, surface coating is the most cost-effective solution for the preventive maintenance of concrete structures. The reason is that the coating can isolate the structure surface from various external hostile surroundings such as water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, chlorides, and sulphate that may be transported from the atmosphere into the structures, challenging their durability and resulting in premature failure. This lecture introduces the authors’ recent work on the development and use of multiple-functional (water proofing, corrosion-prevention, self-cleaning and energy-saving) for the service life extension of existing concrete structures and sustainability improvement of new concrete structures.

【Oral Speechs】

【Conference Ended 】