INFEWS/T3: Managing Energy, Water, and Information Flows for Sustainability across the Advanced Food Ecosystem

[1639391]巴比特，凯丽W.。面对不断增长的人口和不断减少的自然资源，社会面临着提供有弹性的粮食供应的前所未有的挑战，由于整个粮食供应链的效率低下和由此产生的粮食浪费，这一挑战变得更加复杂。对于那些从未被人类消费的40%的食物，用于其生产的大量能源和水资源都被浪费了，并且出现了新的环境挑战，例如填埋食物垃圾所产生的温室气体排放，这是美国的传统管理做法。虽然存在将食物垃圾转化为清洁能源或增值产品的可持续替代方案，并可带来经济增长和环境效益，但由于缺乏对食物垃圾组成和位置的了解，转化混合废物流的技术效率低下，以及食物垃圾政策不一致，这些做法的广泛采用受到限制。为了应对这些挑战，这些项目将在理解和改进与可持续食物垃圾转化为能源系统的新技术、政策和废物基础设施设计相关的技术可行性、经济成本和环境效益方面取得根本性进展。通过将研究成果转化为工业和政策部门的利益相关者，并通过与罗彻斯特市学区和国家聋人技术研究所的教育合作伙伴关系，预计将在食物浪费最小化和管理方面取得的计划中的科学进展将促进美国的新产业和就业机会，并增强下一代劳动力。该项目将结合可持续性、工程、政策、地理空间信息学和生态学的见解，旨在创造和评估新的综合解决方案，以最大限度地减少食物浪费，提高整个食品供应链的资源效率。基础实证和分析研究将通过相互关联的调查线进行，其中将产生新的实证数据，以表征食物垃圾流在地理空间变异性和化学成分方面的异质性。这些数据将用于参数化新的地理空间优化模型，以确定首选的废物管理系统设计（例如，大规模的集中式系统与随机的分散式技术），并评估减少废物的替代政策策略（例如，禁止食品垃圾填埋或奖励食品捐赠计划）。最后，将对三种创新的餐厨垃圾增值技术进行评估：真空循环成核预处理、厌氧消化-热解联合系统和高温质子交换膜沼气转化。综合起来，这些努力将首次全面评估区域食物垃圾流的物理和化学性质如何随时间和空间变化，并发展废物异质性与最佳政策、系统和技术解决方案之间的基本关系。此外，所有提出的解决方案都将使用“联系思维”进行评估，这将量化整体权衡，如废物最小化、净能源消耗、生命周期温室气体排放、对淡水生态系统的影响、政策遵从性和经济成本。

1639391Babbitt, Callie W. Faced with a growing population and a shrinking pool of natural resources, society faces an unprecedented challenge to provide a resilient food supply, made even more complex by vast inefficiencies and resulting food waste generated across the food supply chain. For the 40% of food that never reaches human consumption, the significant energy and water resources that went into its production are lost, and new environmental challenges emerge, such as greenhouse gases emissions from landfilling food waste, the conventional management practice in the US. While sustainable alternatives exist for converting food waste into clean energy resources or value-added products and can lead to economic growth and environmental benefits, widespread adoption of these practices is limited by a lack of knowledge about food waste composition and location, inefficient technologies for converting mixed waste streams, and inconsistent food waste policies. To address these challenges, the PIs will make fundamental advances in understanding and improving the technical feasibility, economic costs, and environmental benefits associated with new technologies, policies, and waste infrastructure designs for sustainable food waste-to-energy systems. The planned scientific advances in food waste minimization and management are expected to catalyze new industries and jobs in the US, by translating research findings for stakeholders in the industrial and policy sectors, and to enhance the next generation workforce, through educational partnerships with the Rochester City School District and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. This project will combine insight from sustainability, engineering, policy, geospatial informatics, and ecology with a goal to create and evaluate novel, integrated solutions for minimizing food waste and improving resource efficiency across the food supply chain. Fundamental empirical and analytical research will be carried out through interconnected lines of inquiry, wherein new empirical data will be generated to characterize food waste stream heterogeneity in terms of geospatial variability and chemical composition. These data will be used to parameterize novel geospatial optimization models to identify preferred waste management system design (e.g., large-scale, centralized systems vs. drop-in, decentralized technologies) and to evaluate alternate policy strategies for waste minimization (e.g., food waste landfill ban or incentives program for food donation). Finally, three innovative food waste valorization technologies will be evaluated: food waste pre-treatment via vacuum cycle nucleation, combined anaerobic digestion-pyrolysis systems, and biogas conversion via high-temperature proton exchange membrane. Combined, these efforts will result in the first comprehensive evaluation of how physical and chemical properties of regional food waste streams vary over time and space, and in the development of fundamental relationships between waste heterogeneity and optimal policy, systems, and technology solutions. In addition, all proposed solutions will be evaluated using "nexus thinking," which will quantify holistic tradeoffs, such as waste minimization, net energy consumption, life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, impact to freshwater ecosystems, policy compliance, and economic costs.