With concerns over increased population and consequent shortage of food-energy-water (FEW) resources, there is an increasing necessity amd interest in reclaiming waste streams for sustainable FEW supply. Urban wastewater is a reliable source for recycling water, energy, and nutrients. The integration of wastewater treatment and algae cultivation has garnered attention as a sustainable and multi-functional reclamation strategy to improve water quality, produce energy, and to recycle nutrients. Nevertheless, this integration has not yet been practically achieved at large-scale. One significant challenge is low productivity and high cost of algae cultivation. The other hurdle is the low value of wastewater-based algal products (algal biofuels), which negates economic feasibility. The overall goal of this research is to develop a novel algae-based urban-wastewater reclamation ecosystem (aSURE) for sustainable FEW supply. This will be achieved by four objectives: (1) develop a novel algae cultivation stratedy for cost-efficient algal biofuel production and wastewater treatment; (2) integrate algae cultivation and urban agriculture for sustainable food production; (3) develop innovative technologies that convert post-extracted algal residue (PEAR) to high value nanomaterials; and (4) create a predictive and dynamic life cycle optimization (LCO) tool for sustainable management for FEW systems. Our research results show that our novel algae cultivation technology can improve algae biomass productivity, 2-3 times higher than the most commonly used algae cultivation system, open ponds (OPs). The cell density is 28 times higher than that of OPs, which significanly reduces the cost of biomass harvesing and post-harvesting processes. At the same time, our algae cultivation strategy can efficiently remove heavy metals, pathogens, salinity, and emerging contaminants (ECs) which is ubiquitous and persistent in conventionial wastewater treatment processes, reducing the risk of these pollutants entering into soils and food chains when using wastewater for agricultural irrigation. Additionally, the nanomaterials developed from PEAR show great potentials in batteries and other applications such as water remediation and drug delivery. Finally, the results of LOC tool demonstrate that significant envirionmental and economic beneftis could be delivered from the aSURE apporach.

Algae-based sustainable urban-wastewater reclamation ecosystem (aSURE): An integrated approach to sustaining food-energy-water supply

254th National Meeting (2017)

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