SusChEM: Advancing Biocatalytic Technology for the Treatment of Emerging Contaminants in Drinking Water

新出现的饮用水污染物，如抗生素和激素，以极低的浓度影响人们的健康，使其难以消除并提供安全的饮用水。这项工作的总体目标是通过使用一种新方法——生物催化剂——从饮用水中去除新出现的污染物，从而保护公众健康。这种方法的工程效益和技术可行性已经得到证明，但目前实施起来过于昂贵。该项目将研究保留或回收生物催化剂的不同策略，使其可以多次重复使用。实现生物催化剂的再利用有可能大大降低公用事业清除新出现的污染物和向消费者提供安全饮用水的成本。生物催化（即基于酶的）方法将使环境工程师能够利用生物酶无与伦比的特异性和亲和力，在温和条件下降解新出现的污染物。生物催化剂在高容量、低价值产品行业（如饮用水行业）应用的主要障碍是其高成本。为了降低成本，生物催化剂的再利用已被确定为一个关键的研究重点。为了满足这一需求，pi将研究在饮用水处理过程中保留或回收生物催化剂的途径。该方法集成了分子生物学、实验测量、过程建模和定量可持续设计，为促进饮用水处理生物催化技术的发展提供了全面的基础。正在测试的假设是，生物催化剂固定i)可以完成，ii)将允许足够的循环使用，使饮用水公用事业公司的生物催化剂采购成本在经济上可行。为了验证这些假设，高氯酸盐降解生物催化剂将使用三种不同的策略进行固定化，然后在批量和柱实验中测量其活性和再利用潜力。实验结果将用于开发高氯酸盐生物催化处理的过程模型，并将这些模型整合到利用生命周期评估（LCA）、生命周期成本（LCC）和技术经济分析（TEA）的可持续设计框架中。通过研究不同固定策略对生物催化剂活性和寿命的影响，将这一理解整合到工艺规模模型中，并应用定量可持续设计来评估与不同固定策略和工艺设计相关的经济和环境权衡，本项目的结果将为生物催化技术在水处理中的应用提供坚实的基础。总的来说，这项工作将通过开发专门针对高氯酸盐和亚氯酸盐的生物催化处理技术，为安全饮用水做出贡献。更广泛地说，这项工作可以通过为水处理中生物催化方法的整体可行性提供概念证明，为环境工程师提供一个巨大的新工具箱，并促进水的安全回用，从而改变我们处理新出现污染物的方法。本科生和研究生的跨学科教育嵌入在该项目中，具体的教育目标旨在提高对新出现的污染物和生物处理过程的认识，招募多样化的学生群体，提高本科生和研究生工程专业学生的沟通技巧。

PI: ZillesProposal: 1705804Emerging drinking water contaminants, such as antibiotics and hormones, affect people's health at extremely low concentrations, making it challenging to remove them and provide safe drinking water. The overarching goal of this work is to protect public health by removing emerging contaminants from drinking water using a new approach: biological catalysts. The engineering benefits and technical feasibility of this approach have been demonstrated, but it is currently too expensive to implement. This project will investigate different strategies for retaining or recovering biological catalysts so they can be reused many times. Achieving biological catalyst reuse has the potential to greatly reduce the costs for public utilities to remove emerging contaminants and provide safe drinking water to consumers.A biocatalytic (i.e., enzyme-based) approach would allow environmental engineers to draw on the unparalleled specificity and affinity of biological enzymes for the degradation of emerging contaminants under mild conditions. A major barrier to the application of biocatalysts in high volume, low value product industries like drinking water has been their high cost. To reduce costs, biocatalyst reuse has been identified as a key research priority. To address this need, the PIs will investigate pathways for retaining or recovering biocatalysts in a drinking water treatment process. The approach integrates molecular biology, experimental measurements, process modeling, and quantitative sustainable design to provide a comprehensive foundation advancing the development of biocatalytic technologies for drinking water treatment. The hypotheses being tested are that biocatalyst immobilization i) can be accomplished and ii) will allow sufficient rounds of reuse to make biocatalyst acquisition costs financially viable for drinking water utilities. To test these hypotheses, perchlorate-degrading biocatalysts will be immobilized using three different strategies, followed by measurements of their activity and reuse potential in batch and column experiments. The experimental results will be used to develop process models for biocatalytic treatment of perchlorate, and these models will be integrated into a sustainable design framework leveraging life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC), and techno-economic analysis (TEA). Results from this project will provide a firm foundation for the application of biocatalytic technologies in water treatment by investigating the effects of different immobilization strategies on biocatalyst activity and longevity, integrating that understanding into process-scale models, and applying quantitative sustainable design to evaluate the economic and environmental tradeoffs associated with different immobilization strategies and process designs. Overall, this work will contribute to safe drinking water by developing a biocatalytic treatment technology that specifically targets perchlorate and chlorite. More generally, this work could transform our approach to emerging contaminants by providing proof of concept for the overall feasibility of biocatalytic approaches in water treatment, providing a vast new toolbox to environmental engineers and facilitating safe water reuse. Interdisciplinary education of undergraduate and graduate students is embedded in the project, and specific educational objectives are designed to increase awareness of emerging contaminants and biological treatment processes, recruit a diverse student population, and improve the communication skills of undergraduate and graduate engineering students.