Sustainable Wastewater Treatment & Resource Recovery from Biowastes
Ammonia Recovery From Digestate and Wastewater
Anayo Ukwuani investigated the kinetics of ammonia mass transfer and effects of temperature, pH and salinity on thermal stripping coupled with acid absorption for ammonium sulfate production with filtrate of anaerobically digested and undigested dairy manure. A laboratory vacuum thermal stripping - acid absorption system was used to evaluate ammonia stripping kinetics and the combined effects of vacuum and temperature on ammonia recovery from anaerobically digested dairy manure. Sohaib Anwar performed a cost-benefit analysis of our ammonia recovery technology, taking Twin Birch Dairy LLC as an example. A 10-gallon vacuum stripping - absorption (VaSA) prototype was used by doctoral students Anayo Ukwuani and Fred Agyeman and postoctoral fellow from Turkey, Dr. Alper Bayrakdar, to develop design and operational parameters and optimize the production of ammonium sulfate crystals with digestate and ammonia-rich wastewater such as sludge digestate, foodwaste digestate, landfill leachate, and source-separated human urine. This project has won a 2015 P3 Award in the 11th National Sustainable Design Expo and received a U.S. patent No. 10,053,369 in 2018.
Fred Agyeman and Youl Han investigated the synergies of integrating VaSA into anaerobic digestion. As an NSF Innovation Corps Team, Fred Agyeman (Entrepreneurial Lead), David Gerber (Industry Mentor) and I (Technical Lead) identified market fit and developed business models for commercializing the VaSA technology. An 125-gallon VaSA system was fabricated in 2021 with Binghamton University XCEED prototyping grants and assembled with NSF I-Corps grant. Funded by NSF Partnerships for Innovation and NYS CoE in Healthy Water Solutions, Dr. Mohammad Badsha, Postdoctoral Researcher, successfully demonstrated VaSA as a scalable technology for ammonia recovery and treatment of sludge digestate at San Luis Obispo Water Resource Recovery Facility, for which City of San Luis Obispo and SUNY received California Association of Sanitation Agencies 2022 Award of Excellence in Innovation and Resilience. Dr. Badsha partnered with Cal Poly students in 2022 for pilot testing of VaSA with dairy manure and manure digestate, coupled with anaerobic digestion of dairy manure from Cal Poly Dairy. Dr. Alsayed Mostafa (Postdoctoral Researcher) and PhD students (Pubudu Wickramasinghe and Taye Hamid) validated design improvements to the 3-pool boiling VaSA system with leachate at Regional Landfill, Ava, NY in summer 2023. In collaboration with Antec Biogas, Pubudu Wickramasinghe completed pilot tests at a pilot biogas plant in Norway in December 2024. A new vacuum stripper has been fabricated with SUNY Tech Accelerator Fund and a new system is almost assembled, transforming the pilot system into a working prototype for onsite tests with both high-solids and low-solids waste streams. Research and development towards technology transfer is anticipated to start in April 2025. Taye aims at performing techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment. Independent postdoctoral research and field study will be considered as long as it is hypothesis-driven and promising to advance the VaSA technology towards commercialization.
Struvite Recovery from Digestate and Wastewater
Matthew Huchzermeier discovered a simple method to reduce Ca inteference to struvite precipitation, diagnosed the other hindrances of dairy manure filtrate, and designed and built an air-lift crystallizer. Lee Martin, Fred Agyeman and Doug Mayer tested struvite precipitation and crystallization with anaerobically digested dairy manure and municipal sludge digestate, demonstrated struvite recovery on the National Mall in the 8th National Sustainable Design Expo in April 2012. This project won the 9th Annual P3 Award! Ehsan Mazinani did laboratory experiments to identify the hindrances to struvite recovery from filtrate of anaerobically digested dairy manure. Visiting Professor Kazi P. Fattah from American University of Sharjah, UAE and I explored struvite recovery from filtrate of anaerobically digested dairy manure with our 7-L air-lift crystallizer in summer 2015.
Intern Yanru Wang from University of Alberta, Canada investigated the optimum Mg supplementation for struvite crystallization and recovered 93-96% of phosphate in human urine after complete hydrolysis of urea and human urine after vacuum stripping of ammonia. Dr. Alper Bayrakdar characterized the crystals recovered from the waterless human urine.
Aysha Iftikhar explored struvite recovery from source-separated human urine and sludge digestate for organic production. She led a market assessment of the technology through an NSF I-Corps Regional Course. An NSF I-Corps National Team including Fred Agyeman (EL), Aysha Iftikhar (Co-EL), Wendong Tao (TL), and James Fettig (IM) performed customer discovery and developed business models for Struvite Recovery for Organic Production (STROP) in December 2022 - January 2023. Aysha elaborated the entire STROP process with hydrolyzed human urine and filtrate of sludge digestate. Field study and modeling are in consideration to accelerate technology transfer.
Anaerobic Digestion
Fred Agyeman tested the effects of food waste particle size and organic loading rate on methane production, digestate dewaterability, solids reduction and energy consumption in three 2-L mesophilic anaerobic digesters. Eileen Leon completed experiments investigating the microbial responses and methane production to variations in feedstock biochemical composition. Jonathan Masih-Das upgraded the lab-scale digesters with automatic biogas flowmetering, conducted batch co-digestion of food waste and dairy manure, and preliminarily examined the synergies of integrating ammonia recovery with semi-continuous co-digestion of food waste and dairy manure. Youl Han explored stability and microbial ecology of anaerobic co-digestion of dairy manure and food waste when vacuum stripping of ammonia in digestate was integrated into mesophilic anaerobic digestion at increasing organic loading rates. Fred Agyeman and Youl Han investigated the inhibition of ammonia and propionic acid to anaerobic digestion. Fabiane M. Vieira, visiting PhD student from University of Campinas (Campinas/ Brazil), experimented anaerobic digestion of ionic liquid residues. Pubudu Wickramasinghe integrated VaSA into thermophilic anaerobic digestion and investigated the effects of robust application of VaSA on digestion stability and microbial ecology.
Pyrolysis of Biowastes for Water Treatment and Reuse
Kalyani Mer employed slow pyrolysis to produce biochar and develop methods to activate biochars that selectively adsorb the contaminants of specific concern, and investigated the mechanisms of biochar adsorption of heavy metals and PFOS.
Prospective students: PhD or MS student to develop a novel pyrolysis process for valorization of wet bioresidues.
Sustainable Wastewater Treatment
Land-based wastewater treatment systems for small wineries
Liam Hanley completed a literature search on the generation, characteristics, and treatment systems of winery wastewater. Land-based wastewater treatment systems were identified to be the best practical solutions for small wineries. To develop design basis, monitoring of existing treatment systems including septic tanks and subsurface treatment systems will continue for a year along with laboratory experiment on treatment mechanisms and design principles.
Low-dissolved oxygen biological nitrogen removal
Jianfeng Wen explored aeration control strategy, microbial kinetics, and microbial communities of low dissolved oxygen simultaneous nitrification and denitrification process at full-scale activated sludge wastewater treatment plants.
Using hydrogen peroxide to enhance nitrification in constructed wetlands
Madhuri Dinakar investigated into the efficacy and optimum dosage of hydrogen peroxide for nitrification in constructed wetlands.
Constructed wetlands as a green infrastructure
Kevin Kimball, Beth Gondeck, Anayo Ukwuani and Jonathan Masih-Das monitored a constructed wetland treatment facility for treatment of combined sewer overflows. This is one of the four CSO constructed wetland treatment systems in the US.
Enhancing anammox in constructed wetlands & biofilters for low-energy N removal
From 2008 to 2012 Jianfeng Wen, Yuling He, Ziyuan Wang and Jing Wang pioneered enhancement of simultaneous nitritation and anammox (SNA) and simultaneous nitritation, anammox, and denitrification (SNAD) in recirculating vertical flow biofilters, free water surface wetlands, and gravel biofilters treating dairy and synthetic wastewaters. Abundant anammox bacteria were detected using FISH and nitrogen removal rate was greatly increased. Shun Shi developed mechanistic models to simulate SNA and SNAD in gravel biofilters. Dr. Jianqiu Han (2013 - 2014, Professor with Shanghai Institute of Technology) and Hanyan Li explored ammonia stress on plant physiological properties in free water surface wetlands treating dairy wastewater. Hanyan Li (2014-2016) investigated the microbial community and plant nitrogen assimilation along with treatment performance of recirculating vertical flow constructed wetlands treating dairy wastewater.
Constructed wetlands for wastewater reclamation
Keshav Sauba reviewed the development of constructed wetlands for wastewater reclamation. Marvin N. Mandela investigated the treatment of source-separated human urine in different designs of constructed wetlands
Vegetated submerged beds for treatment of wood leachate
Shun Shi investigated the dynamics of rainfall leaching through ACQ-treated wood piles and examined treatment of wood leachate in a vegerated submerged bed. Dr. Jianqiu Han (2013) conducted laboratory analyses to address copper removal mechanisms in the vegetated submerged bed treating wood leachate.
Pebble/Sand filters for solid-liquid separation
Doug Mayer compared different loading modes and explored dewatering enhancements to improve this low-cost solid-liquid separation technology for scaled-up applications at dairy farms. Mengjing Xia developed 2-stage pebble/sand filters for solid-liquid separation of anaerobically digested dairy manure.
Inventory of greenhouse gas emission from constructed wetlands
Xolile Maphanga reviewed the status and influencing factors of greenhouse gas emission from constructed wetlands.
