Arda Isildar
PhD fellow
Biography
Arda received his B.Eng. degree from Istanbul University, Turkey in 2009 as an Environmental Engineer. The title of the final thesis was ''Treatment of Pharmaceutical Wastewasters by Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) Processes''. After working at a medical waste management company (Athisa S.A.) for a year he started his M.Sc. studies at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) on 2010. He graduated from TUM with merit with special emphasize on his thesis entitled ''Adaptation measures to Climate Chage in the Eastern Mediterranean with a Focus on Water Resources'' supervised by Prof. Peter Wilderer. In his professional career, Arda has a number of long-term internship experiences including GFA Consulting Group (Hamburg, Germany), Rachel Carson Center (Munich, Germany) and Istanbul Water and Sewage Administration (Istanbul, Turkey).
As of October 2013, Arda works at the Pollution Prevention and Resource Recovery chair group of Environmental Engineering Water Technology department at UNESCO-IHE as a PhD fellow on the research project entitled ''Metal recovery from electronic waste''.
His research interests include but not limited to environmental biotechnology, e-waste management, and sustainability.
Research summary
Discarded electric and electronic devices comprise a growing segment of waste generated at households. Despite the growing awareness and deterring legislation, most of the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is disposed in landfills. Inappropriate management of electronic waste is of global concern due to the nature of production and disposal of waste in a globalized world. In addition to toxic compounds present in WEEE, it also contains valuable metals. Moreover, it is an opportunity to utilize discarded devices, more precisely printed circuit boards (PCBs), as a secondary source of precious metals.
In this research, biological treatment of discarded boards, with the aim to recover metals of interest, is investigated. Biohydrometallurgy, using microbes for metal recovery, enables environmental-friendly and cost-effective processes to recover metals from waste material. In this context microbial leaching of metals from waste material (bioleaching) and biomass-based recovery of metals from leachate (biosorption, bioprecipitation) are investigated. In addition, efficiency of a series of physico-chemical methods, e.g. acid leaching, thiourea/thiosulfate leaching, precipitation, and electrowinning are assessed and compared to bio-mass based techniques.