SBIR Phase I: Energy Efficient Supercritical Water Oxidation

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是帮助废水处理厂符合新兴的环境法规，同时节省能源和不增加成本。它有可能将需要运离现场和填埋的生物固体数量减少高达85%，并完全摧毁气味和病原体。因此，该项目还可能促进全国的社会公正。目前，低收入和弱势社区从其他社区继承废物，有时远离废物的来源。他们继承了恶臭、病媒（老鼠、苍蝇、鸟类）和毒素。例如，纽约市生产的7%的生物固体最终通过火车和卡车进入阿拉巴马州。由于恶臭，生活在垃圾填埋场附近和交通沿线的人们不再使用他们的门廊。通过提高一种比最先进的技术更好地破坏有机物的技术的经济性，污水处理厂将变得更清洁，更少恶臭，使用更少的能源。其他市场也可能开放，包括清洁能源和化工制造。最后，该项目可能会在未来三年内增加对员工的雇佣。SBIR一期项目旨在创造一种经济、可靠的工艺，以清洁、彻底地销毁有机废物，从废水处理厂的污泥和生物固体中提取更多的资源和能源，同时大大减少需要运离现场处理的生物固体数量。这一目标将通过改进一种利用废物中所含的水来创造超氧化环境的工艺来实现。类似的工艺使用昂贵且危险的纯氧，能耗极高，而且维护成本高。通过在能量回收方面的创新，使用空气代替氧气作为氧化剂是可能的，而无需加热和压缩整个气流（氧气加惰性氮气）的巨大成本。一旦确定了能量回收的最佳技术条件，该项目将进入设计和制造阶段。由此产生的新能源回收模块将被添加到现有系统中。样机将进行连续运行测试。将获得关于能量回收的新见解，这将使整个科学界受益。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to help wastewater treatment plants become compliant with emerging environmental regulations, while saving energy and without adding cost. It has potential to reduce the amount of biosolids that need to be shipped off-site and landfilled by up to 85% as well as completely destroy odors and pathogens. As a result, the project may also enhance social justice throughout the country. Currently, low-income and disadvantaged communities inherit waste from other communities, sometimes very far away from where the waste originated. They inherit the stench, the vectors (rats, flies, birds) and toxins. For example, 7% of the biosolids produced by New York City end up in Alabama, via trains and trucks. People living near the landfills and along transportation routes no longer use their porch because of the stench. By improving the economics of a technology that destroys organics much better than state-of-the-art technologies, wastewater treatment plants will become cleaner, less malodorous and use less energy. Other markets could open as well including clean power and chemical manufacturing. Finally, the project may lead to increased hiring of employees over the next three years. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to create an affordable and reliable process to cleanly and completely destroy organic waste, extract more resources and energy from sludge and biosolids at wastewater treatment plants while considerably reducing the amount of biosolids that need to be shipped off-site for disposal. This objective will be achieved by improving a process that uses water contained within the waste to create a hyper oxidative environment. Similar processes use costly and hazardous pure oxygen, are extremely energy intensive, and are plagued with high maintenance cost. By making innovations in energy recovery, the use of air as an oxidant instead of oxygen is possible without the large cost associated with having to heat and compress an entire air stream- oxygen plus inert nitrogen. Once optimal technical conditions for energy recovery are identified, the project will enter the design and fabrication phases. The resulting new energy recovery module will be added to an existing system. The prototype will be tested for continuous operation. New insights into energy recovery will be gained, which will benefit the scientific community as a whole.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.