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Sewers could help clean the atmosphere

26th April 2019

     

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Sewage treatment – an unglamorous backbone of urban living – could offer a cost-effective way to combat climate change by flushing greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the atmosphere.

Last year, researchers at Princeton University concluded that sewer plants serving municipalities globally offer a major option for capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHGs.

Research and development is needed before the systems could be deployed, the team identified several potentially viable paths to using sewage as a carbon sink – that is, sewer plants could clean the atmosphere as they clean water.

“The water industry could play a big role in tackling climate change,” says Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment civil and environmental engineering professor Jason Ren.

“It is a very exciting idea because people always think about energy or transportation, but water has not been considered as a major factor in carbon reduction.”

Sewer plants are massive industrial operations that use a variety of techniques to remove pollutants before wastewater returns to the environment.

Most people do not think about the systems, the volume of water is staggering.

New York City, for example, runs 14 sewer plants and processes 1.3-billion gallons of water daily (enough to fill about 22 000 Olympic pools).

In the past few years, researchers have proposed methods to use wastewater to capture enough carbon to offset the amount generated to power heavy equipment used to run sewer plants. Researchers discovered that some techniques not only would allow the plants to balance their own emissions (cleaning water requires considerable energy use), researchers could also absorb extra carbon that operators pumped into the sewage as it moved through the plants.

“If you consider it as a resource, you could convert part of the waste material including the CO2 into products,” says Ren.

Generally, the operators would use pipes to pump CO2 into the sewer water in the plants. Operators would then use a variety of techniques to convert the gas into carbonate minerals, biofuels or a sludge-based fertiliser called biochar.

The researchers reviewed a range of techniques including: microbial electrolytic carbon capture, microbial electrosynthesis, microalgae cultivation as well as the biochar production.

The microbial electrolytic carbon capture techniques uses a combination of bacteria and a low electrical charge to change the water’s alkalinity and, with the addition of silicates, convert CO2 to solid carbonate and bicarbonate. In addition to the solids, which can be used by industry, the process creates large amounts of hydrogen gas. The researchers noted that this technique is currently used in the laboratory and additional work is needed to show whether it is economical and applicable at the industrial level.

Microbial electrosynthesis is similar to the microbial electrolytic technique except that the process relies on bacteria to directly capture CO2 and convert it into other organic compounds such as ethanol or formic acid. The researchers noted that the technology is promising but major breakthroughs are needed to fully develop the process.

Microalgae cultivation could be used as a complement to other processes. Algae and bacteria use the CO2, nitrogen and phosphorous in the wastewater to grow. Operators then harvest the algae, which can be used as animal feed, for soil treatment or in biofuel production. The researchers said work is going forward on identifying the best local microbial communities, small and intensive bioreactors, and efficient techniques for separating solids and liquids.

Biochar production converts wastewater sludge and microalgae into material that improves soil’s ability to retain water and nutrients. The technique, which removes pathogens, is usually self-sufficient in terms of energy, although most biochar is now made from dry plants. The researchers said using wastewater sludge to make biochar may require more energy or additional steps to account for the additional water content.

Ren adds that in many locations, sewer plants are already located near industrial facilities that emit large amounts of CO2 such as power plants, cement factories and refineries.

He says using the sewer systems to capture the carbon could provide an economic return for these companies in the form of carbon credits. He adds that the technique could be used by industries that already run their own wastewater treatment systems such as oil and gas producers, brewers, and distillers. When analysing the potential environmental and economic benefits of such operation, researchers found millions of tons of CO2 could be captured and used, while billions of dollars in revenue could be generated in both the US and China – the world’s two largest CO2 emitters.

The researchers added that, while many techniques are promising, “the concept is still in its infancy”. Researchers say full use of the technology will require work of not only scientists, but also regulators, investors and industry.

University of Iowa engineering professor Jerald Schnoor says national leaders should consider wastewater treatment as part of efforts to decrease the country’s carbon footprint in coming decades.

“Wastewater treatment is one of the largest energy users and GHGs emitters of a municipal spreadsheet,” says Schnoor, who was not involved in this research.

“Technologies exist at pilot scale to achieve zero carbon and energy footprints, but they are not proven to be scalable or cost-effective at the current time. As the country now embarks on ‘green infrastructure’ initiatives, as being discussed by the new Congress, this should be a high priority.”

In addition to Ren, the authors include Princeton first author associate research scholar Lu Lu, civil and environmental engineering professor Catherine Peters, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Jeremy Guest, University of California’s Greg Rau, Louisiana State University’s Santa Cruz and Xiuping Zhu. Support for the project was provided in part by the National Science Foundation.

Edited by Zandile Mavuso
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor: Features

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