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Comparative Emergy Evaluation of Nutrient Removal and Nutrient Recovery Technologies and the Implications to Nutrient Management
Citation:
Theregowda, R. AND Cissy Ma. Comparative Emergy Evaluation of Nutrient Removal and Nutrient Recovery Technologies and the Implications to Nutrient Management. 10th Biennial Emergy Research Conference, Gaineville, Florida, January 24 - 27, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
To address 1) how the regulatory rules drive the system changes; 2) how the conventional system is transitioned to more cost effective more sustainable alternatives in nutrient management.
Description:
The urbanization of the modern community creates large population centers that generate concentrated wastewater. A large expenditure on wastewater treatment has to be invested to make a modern city function without human and environmental health problems. Society relies on systems with various technological energies utilizing certain emergy expenditure to disperse the wastewater. Though non-energy inputs can be significant in wastewater treatment and conveyance, energy use is no doubt the underline expenditure that dominants the system impacts. It often is affected by influent mixed sewer characteristics, topography, treatment technology, regulatory requirement, water transport, scale, etc. This study aims to use emergy as a tool to evaluate total energy use in different sewer systems and probe where the most efficiency gain or energy use reduction could be. Emergy evaluation not only capture the flows in technosphere systems, but also quantify the flows and storage in biosphere such as resource use. Various energy use profiles from communities such as Bath, NY, Lawrence, MA, San Francisco, CA, Miami, FL, Cincinnati, OH, Northern Kentucky SD1 or Dayton, OH will be compiled and compared. The results will help us better understand the thermodynamic requirement ranges for wastewater dissimilation and water/energy nexus in urban settings.