Title: Nitrogen and Phosphorus Recovery from Anthropogenic Liquid Waste Streams
Nutrient recovery from waste is a promising strategy to conserve inputs while reducing nutrient discharge to the natural environment. Multiple waste streams have shown promise with respect to nutrient recovery. Multiple technologies also show promise at a pilot or full scale. These technologies, however, must not exacerbate other environmental issues, with excessive energy use, unsustainable material extraction (e.g., mineral extraction, cement use), or toxin release into the environment. Such technologies must also be feasible from economic and social perspectives. Work, therefore, should focus on both improving our current suite of available technologies for nutrient recovery from waste and framing policies that blend affordability with incentives, thereby fostering an environment conducive to innovation and adoption of sustainable approaches. This review considers the issues associated with nutrient recovery from waste, including technical feasibility and economic, environmental, and social factors, and identifies current knowledge gaps and emerging opportunities for nutrient waste recovery. more »« less
Schreiber, Tatiana; Opperman, Shaina; Hardin, Rebecca; Cavicchi, Julia; Pallmeyer, Audrey; Nace, Kim; Love, Nancy
(, Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development)
null
(Ed.)
This paper reports on social research investigating perceptions concerning the diversion of urine from the waste stream and its use as fertilizer in two study regions, New England and the Upper Midwest. We hypothesized that discomfort or disgust might affect acceptance of such a shift in human “waste” management. However, our findings suggest that a more significant concern of those potentially involved in this process may be distrust of how economic interests influence scientific and technical information. Both physical risks (to the environment and public health) and socio-political risks (to fragile farm economies and consumer communities) play out at individual, household, regional, and global scales. We describe the intersection of these complex understandings as nested risks and responsibilities that must inform the future of urine reclamation. Our respondents' shared concern about environmental risks has already galvanized communities to take responsibility for implementing closed-loop alternatives to current agricultural inputs and waste management practices in their communities. Attention to these nested understandings of both risk and responsibility should shape research priorities and foster participatory approaches to urine nutrient reclamation, including strategies for education, planning, regulation, technology design, and agricultural application.
Femeena, Pandara Valappil; House, Gregory R.; Brennan, Rachel A.
(, Journal of the ASABE)
Highlights Aquatic vegetation-based nutrient recovery offers an alternate approach for treating agricultural wastewater. Microalgae and duckweed can upcycle waste nutrients into valuable bio-based products. Producing feed, fertilizer, and fuel from manure-grown aquatic vegetation promotes a circular N-bioeconomy. Abstract . The massive amounts of nutrients that are currently released into the environment as waste have the potential to be recovered and transformed from a liability into an asset through photosynthesis, industry insight, and ecologically informed engineering design aimed at circularity. Fast-growing aquatic plant-like vegetation such as microalgae and duckweed have the capacity to enable local communities to simultaneously treat their own polluted water and retain nutrients that underlie the productivity of modern agriculture. Not only are they highly effective at upcycling waste nutrients into protein-rich biomass, microalgae and duckweed also offer excellent opportunities to substitute or complement conventional synthetic fertilizers, feedstocks in biorefineries, and livestock feed while simultaneously reducing the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise be required for their production and transport to farms. Integrated systems growing microalgae or duckweed on manure or agricultural runoff, and subsequent reuse of the harvested biomass to produce animal feed, soil amendments, and biofuels, present a sustainable approach to advancing circularity in agricultural systems. This article provides a review of past efforts toward advancing the circular nitrogen bioeconomy using microalgae- and duckweed-based technologies to treat, recover, and upcycle nutrients from agricultural waste. The majority of the work with microalgae- and duckweed-based wastewater treatment has been concentrated on municipal and industrial effluents, with <50% of studies focusing on agricultural wastewater. In terms of scale, more than 91% of the microalgae-based studies and 58% of the duckweed-based studies were conducted at laboratory-scale. While the range of nutrient removals achieved using these technologies depends on various factors such as species, light, and media concentrations, 65% to 100% of total N, 82% to 100% of total P, 98% to 100% of NO3-, and 96% to 100% of NH3/NH4+ can be removed by treating wastewater with microalgae. For duckweed, removals of 75% to 98% total N, 81% to 93% total P, 72% to 98% NH3/NH4+, and 57% to 92% NO3- have been reported. Operating conditions such as hydraulic retention time, pH, temperature, and the presence of toxic nutrient levels and competing species in the media should be given due consideration when designing these systems to yield optimum benefits. In addition to in-depth studies and scientific advancements, policies encouraging supply chain development, market penetration, and consumer acceptance of these technologies are vitally needed to overcome challenges and to yield substantial socio-economic and environmental benefits from microalgae- and duckweed-based agricultural wastewater treatment. Keywords: Circular bioeconomy, Duckweed, Manure treatment, Microalgae, Nitrogen, Nutrient recycling, Wastewater treatment.
ABSTRACT Globally, by 2030, it is estimated that about 2 billion tons of food waste will be generated. This will not only cause economic losses but will also lead to serious environmental issues such as the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), bad odor, and land pollution due to the decomposition of food waste in an open environment and landfills. It is imperative to develop novel solutions to reduce food waste and perhaps valorize it into a valuable product, thereby reducing its environmental and economic impacts. Food waste can be considered a renewable and sustainable feedstock that can be used for chemical and biological processing for its valorization. In this investigation, hydrochar is derived from the hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of food waste and subjected to chemical activation with potassium hydroxide (KOH), followed by thermal treatment at 800°C to produce porous carbon (POC). As‐prepared POC is thoroughly characterized by Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area analyzer, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). A specific capacitance of 112 F/g at 0.5 A/g current density is observed for POC in the three‐cell standard electrochemical setup while asymmetric supercapacitor (ASC) fabricated with POC and Cu‐ferrite electrodes exhibited energy and power densities of 29 Wh/kg and 1.36 kW/kg, respectively. Preliminary cost analysis shows a significantly lower cost for the POC derived from food waste than for a few other biomass feedstocks.
Inspiring STEM education focused on solutionsNancy Butler Songer, from the University of Utah, makes a call for collective action to create a new curriculum focused on the design of solutions. June 5, 2023, marked The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) fiftieth anniversary of World Environment Day, the largest global platform for environmental public outreach. Hosted by Côte D’Ivoire, this year’s celebration emphasized a need for collective action and policy to realize known solutions, such as the sustainable design of products and materials to reduce how much plastic waste flows into aquatic ecosystems. World Environment Day helps us to recognize that to address many current environmental, educational, health, and economic challenges that have foundations in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, we cannot rely on individuals or even experts within one area of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or education. We must innovate with, study, and empower students, teachers, community members, and university and industry partners toward collective action.
Hsu, Emily; Barmak, Katayun; West, Alan C.; Park, Ah-Hyung A.
(, Green Chemistry)
The amount of electronic waste (e-waste) globally has doubled in just five years, from approximately 20 million tons to 40 million tons of e-waste generated per year. In 2016, the global amount of e-waste reached an all-time high of 44.7 million tons. E-waste is an invaluable unconventional resource due to its high metal content, as nearly 40% of e-waste is comprised of metals. Unfortunately, the rapid growth of e-waste is alarming due to severe environmental impacts and challenges associated with complex resource recovery that has led to the use of toxic chemicals. Furthermore, there is a very unfortunate ethical issue related to the flow of e-wastes from developed countries to developing countries. At this time, e-waste is often open pit burned and toxic chemicals are used without adequate regulations to recover metals such as copper. The recovered metals are eventually exported back to the developed countries. Thus, the current global circular economy of e-waste is not sustainable in terms of environmental impact as well as creation of ethical dilemmas. Although traditional metallurgical processes can be extended to e-waste treatment technologies, that is not enough. The complexity of e-waste requires the development of a new generation of metallurgical processes that can separate and extract metals from unconventional components such as polymers and a wide range of metals. This review focuses on the science and engineering of both conventional and innovative separation and recovery technologies for e-wastes with special attention being given to the overall sustainability. Physical separation processes, including disassembly, density separation, and magnetic separation, as well as thermal treatment of the polymeric component, such as pyrolysis, are discussed for the separation of metals and non-metals from e-wastes. The subsequent metal recovery processes through pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and biometallurgy are also discussed in depth. Finally, insights on future research towards sustainable treatment and recovery of e-waste are presented including the use of supercritical CO 2 .
Wang, Zhiyue, Skerlos, Steve J, and Novak, Paige J. Nitrogen and Phosphorus Recovery from Anthropogenic Liquid Waste Streams. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10611044. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 49.1 Web. doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-112320-082121.
Wang, Zhiyue, Skerlos, Steve J, & Novak, Paige J. Nitrogen and Phosphorus Recovery from Anthropogenic Liquid Waste Streams. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 49 (1). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10611044. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-112320-082121
@article{osti_10611044,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Nitrogen and Phosphorus Recovery from Anthropogenic Liquid Waste Streams},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10611044},
DOI = {10.1146/annurev-environ-112320-082121},
abstractNote = {Nutrient recovery from waste is a promising strategy to conserve inputs while reducing nutrient discharge to the natural environment. Multiple waste streams have shown promise with respect to nutrient recovery. Multiple technologies also show promise at a pilot or full scale. These technologies, however, must not exacerbate other environmental issues, with excessive energy use, unsustainable material extraction (e.g., mineral extraction, cement use), or toxin release into the environment. Such technologies must also be feasible from economic and social perspectives. Work, therefore, should focus on both improving our current suite of available technologies for nutrient recovery from waste and framing policies that blend affordability with incentives, thereby fostering an environment conducive to innovation and adoption of sustainable approaches. This review considers the issues associated with nutrient recovery from waste, including technical feasibility and economic, environmental, and social factors, and identifies current knowledge gaps and emerging opportunities for nutrient waste recovery.},
journal = {Annual Review of Environment and Resources},
volume = {49},
number = {1},
publisher = {Annual Review of Environment and Resources},
author = {Wang, Zhiyue and Skerlos, Steve J and Novak, Paige J},
}
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