Nitrogen Recovery from Wastewater

Image Credit: Symbiosis Australia / shutterstock.com

Recovered Potential: Sanitation for a Circular Resource Economy.

About the Technology

Municipal and agricultural wastewaters contain ammonia nitrogen that, when released to waterways, causes eutrophication and severely harms natural ecosystems. Biological wastewater treatment removes ammonia but is energy-intensive, consuming ~3% of US electricity supply. Concurrently, ammonia is produced industrially through Haber-Bosch synthesis, which is also energy-intensive and responsible for ~1.2% of global energy use and ~1.5% of carbon dioxide emissions. This is a worldwide problem, especially affecting populations that are food and water insecure, sensitive to global warming, and/or have subpar water treatment and fertilizer transport infrastructure.

Kindle Installing Reactor at Codiga. Credit: Sam Bunke — *Kindle Williams Installing Reactor at Codiga. (Photo Credit: Sam Bunke)*

Our solution is to selectively remove and recover pure ammonia from wastewaters using our electrochemical stripping (ECS) reactor, simultaneously mitigating pollution, generating valuable products, and improving the energy efficiency of water treatment and ammonia production. Upcoming regulations on wastewater emissions will require installation of greater nitrogen removal capacity at wastewater treatment plants, upwards of $11 billion in the Bay Area alone. Thus, our value proposition includes more reliable, resilient regulatory compliance alongside wastewater treatment cost savings. In addition, ammonia from wastewater can potentially supplement up to 30% of the industrial ammonia production industry. Wastewater-derived ammonia can be used as a fertilizer or a commodity chemical. Our target markets are US municipal wastewater treatment facilities, private industries that release ammonia-laden wastewater, and operations that use anaerobic digesters.

Lab Scale ECS Reactor. Credit: Orisa Coombs — *Lab Scale ECS Reactor. (Photo credit: Orisa Coombs)*

The HIT Fund is supporting us with a consultant for techno-economic analysis, relevant industry advisors, and an MBA intern to help us further understand our costs and competitiveness, find early adopter customers, and learn the needs and barriers to entry of different markets.