Title: “NEW” Resource Recovery from Wastewater through Technological Advancement
Speaker: Dr. Zhen "Jason" He (Professor, Virginia Tech)
Abstract: Rapid socio-economic growth has created great challenges such as water scarcity, larger nutrient demand for increasing food production, and energy shortage. Wastewater is a key element in the water-energy-food nexus, and may offer a promising solution for alleviating these challenges through innovative recovery of value-added resources. It is of great interest to transform conventional energy-intensive wastewater treatment to a resource recovery process for reclaiming valuable resources such as nutrients (e.g., nitrogen and phosphorus), bioenergy derived from organic wastes, and high-quality water towards wastewater reuse. Those valuable resources are considered “NEW resources” (Nutrient-Energy-Water). The demand for NEW resources urges the development of cost-effective reclamation technologies through innovative research. This presentation will focus on synergistic cooperation between conventional (e.g., anaerobic digestion) and emerging technologies (e.g., bioelectrochemical systems, forward osmosis, etc.) for accomplishing NEW resource recovery from wastewater.
Host: Dr. Yantao Li
