SBIR Phase I: Algae Cultivation Technology for Value Added Co-products from Waste Water Treatment Effluent

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是改善废水的再利用。本项目提出了一种新型藻类反应器，以减少生物营养物污染。这将改善健康，潜在的商业捕鱼资源损失，水上旅游和财产价值下降。藻类种植可产生的产品的多样性提高了全球食物链的稳健性和国内原料的安全性，例如家畜和水产养殖的高营养饲料以及化学品和生物燃料的新来源。建议的设计最大限度地提高了水和能源的资源效率，从而能够从边缘土地中提取价值。拟议的项目旨在通过发展工业规模的藻类光生物反应器来降低废水处理设施流出物中的生物营养物污染物水平，该反应器设计用于在大容量连续流动过程中运行。与现有的营养物去除方法相比，新技术的预期优势是降低了资本和运营费用，并且能够产生具有商业价值的高纯度藻类副产品。研究目标包括：(1)建立不同流动条件下反应器的计算流体力学（CFD）模型；(2)在反应器中进行染料示踪实验，验证建模结果；(3)将反应器安装为包括超滤、产品循环流、营养传感器和过程反馈控制在内的综合营养物去除系统的一部分；(4)利用活藻培养物和邻近污水处理设施排出的污水，评估该系统去除营养物质的能力；(5)对提议的工艺进行技术经济分析。该项目的结果将更好地了解反应器设计和运行参数对水力和固体停留时间分布的影响，这些影响如何影响系统的废物去除性能，以及哪些设计参数对经济可行性的控制最大。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 impacts of this Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to improve reuse of wastewater. This project advances a new algae reactor to reduce biological nutrient pollution. This will improve health, potential loss of commercial fishing resources, water tourism, and property value decline. The diversity of products that can be generated from algae cultivation improve the robustness of the global food chain and the security of domestic feedstocks, e.g. high nutrition feeds for livestock and aquaculture and a new source of chemicals and biofuels. The proposed design for maximum resource efficiency in water and energy enables value extraction from marginal lands.The proposed project aims to reduce levels of biological nutrient pollutants in the effluent of wastewater treatment facilities—by the development of an industrial scale, algae photobioreactor, designed to operate in a high-volume, continuous flow process. Anticipated advantages of the new technology are a reduction in capital and operating expense compared to existing nutrient removal methods and the capacity to generate, high-purity, algae coproducts with commercial value. Research objectives include the following: (1) create a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the reactor under various flow conditions; (2) perform dye tracer experiments in the reactor as validation of the modeling results; (3) install the reactor as part of an integrated nutrient removal system including ultrafiltration, product recycle stream, nutrient sensors and process feedback control; (4) evaluate the nutrient removal capabilities of the system using a live algae culture and effluent from an adjacent wastewater treatment facility; and (5) perform a technoeconomic analysis of the proposed process. Results of the project will provide a better understanding of the effect of reactor design and operating parameters on the hydraulic and solids residence time distributions, how these influence the waste removal performance of the system, and what design parameters exert the most control over economic feasibility.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.