Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2009NJ194B

Innovative Research and Development for Environmental Protection and Sustainable Waste and Wastewater Management System Design

Institute: New Jersey
Year Established: 2009 Start Date: 2009-03-01 End Date: 2010-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $5,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $10,000

Principal Investigators: David Babson, Donna E. Fennell

Project Summary: The continued utilization of fossil-fuel energy sources is transferring carbon from the geosphere to the atmosphere and hydrosphere at an unsustainable rate, and is causing global warming and ocean acidification. This fact is fundamental to the current debate about energy policy, and has fused energy and environmental policy together. Recovering energy from biogas generated from degrading organic substrates (biomass) is attractive because there are numerous sources of cheap biomass to use, including municipal solid waste (MSW). The ability to characterize and understand the significant biochemical pathways involved in anaerobic degradation processes will allow optimized systems to effectively recover valuable fuel products from degrading waste while minimizing and simultaneously treating associated wastewater streams. The strategy considered here focuses on maximizing methanogenesis to increase the prospect of recovering useable energy while minimizing the energy needed to treat associated wastewater streams without compromising a commitment to clean water effluents.