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Water Quality Conversion Engineering Lab
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The lab uses the power of microorganisms to clean water and to recover resources and energy from it.
AboutAbout the lab
Circulating water and resources through the power of microbes.
The Water Quality Conversion Engineering Lab studies technologies that use the activity of microorganisms to clean water.
The lab works on biotechnologies that degrade and remove environmental pollutants, as well as technologies that extract electrical energy directly from wastewater.
It also studies microbe-catalyzed manufacturing (semi-artificial photosynthesis) and the behavior of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria and biofilms.
Key terms
- anammox
- A bacterial reaction that produces nitrogen gas from ammonium and nitrite under oxygen-free conditions. It can be used to remove nitrogen from wastewater.
- Microbial fuel cell
- A device that generates electricity by collecting the electrons released when microorganisms break down organic matter in wastewater.
- Biofilm
- A film-like mass formed when microorganisms gather and attach to a surface using substances they produce themselves.
NewsLab news
A paper from joint research with Universiti Sains Malaysia was published in ACS Omega
Professor Okabe received the ISME/IWA BioCluster Awards Grand Prize
Research on how anammox bacteria tolerate oxygen was published in The ISME Journal
Research on how plasmids carrying antimicrobial resistance genes spread was published in iScience
Students received the Lion Award and the Kurita Award at the Japan Society on Water Environment
ResearchResearch themes
The lab studies technologies that make use of microbial activity to achieve both wastewater treatment and the recovery of energy and resources. Its work is wide-ranging, from clarifying the properties of nitrogen-converting microorganisms to microbial fuel cells, artificial photosynthesis, antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, and anaerobic fermentation.
*Illustrative imageMicrobial research on nitrogen
The lab designs and optimizes processes that combine partial nitritation and anammox in order to remove nitrogen from wastewater efficiently. It also investigates the physiology of anammox bacteria, aiming to provide findings that help bring the process into practical use.
*Illustrative imageMicrobial fuel cells
The lab studies technologies that clean water without using energy, or while generating energy. Using microbial fuel cells, it aims to achieve energy-saving wastewater treatment and energy recovery from sewage.
*Illustrative imageArtificial photosynthesis and bioelectrochemistry
Powered by renewable energy such as sunlight or by microbial fuel cells, the lab develops bioprocesses that convert substances that burden the environment, such as CO2 and nitrogen compounds, into useful chemicals.
*Illustrative imageAntimicrobial resistance and biofilms
Microorganisms are known to become more resistant to antimicrobial agents inside biofilms. The lab investigates how biofilms form and how this relates to antimicrobial resistance, as well as how antimicrobial resistance genes spread among bacteria.
MembersFaculty
Members of the Water Quality Conversion Engineering Lab include faculty, visiting researchers, postdoctoral researchers, doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students, and research students.As of 2026
- ProfessorSatoshi Okabe
- Associate ProfessorMamoru Oshiki
VoicesStudent voices
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Aeration tank activated sludge process STP Bengaluru India” Vraj Acharya, WELL Labs / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Microbial research on nitrogen: “Anammox sbr” Kinestetika / CC BY 2.5 (cropped)
- Microbial fuel cells: “Aeration tank of activated sludge sewage treatment plant near Adelaide” Marcos von Sperling / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Artificial photosynthesis and bioelectrochemistry: “Geobacter sulfurreducens” Mantapia11147 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Antimicrobial resistance and biofilms: “Mixed bacterial biofilm of staphylococci and bacilli” SandraG89 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Environmental Risk Engineering Lab): “Sedimentation Basin” Fmartinezcl / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Water Environment Conservation Engineering Lab): “Activated sludge ( )” SuSanA Secretariat / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Resource Bioengineering Lab): “Beachrock Varigotti Liguria” Alessio Rovere / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Water Reclamation Engineering Lab): “Cutaway of a microfiltration module with hollow fiber membranes at a NEWater plant” Z22 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
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