Greenhouse Nitrogen Emissions from Wastewater Treatment Operation: Phase I – Molecular Level through Whole Reactor Level Characterization

This project is one of the first attempts to characterize nitrogenous greenhouse gas (N-GHG) emissions from wastewater treatment plants using a standard analytical approach to collect full-scale plant data from BNR facilities in the U.S. The results of this study will be integrated into mechanistic activated sludge process models, which will be refined by the addition of autotrophic pathways for N2O and NO emissions. The refined mechanistic models will allow the wastewater industry to mitigate N2O and NO emissions from a range of wastewater treatment processes by understanding the pathways leading to N2O generation and emissions. With this understanding, the wastewater sector will be able to engineer strategies for wastewater treatment that minimize gaseous nitrogen oxide emissions. Published by WERF. 170 pages. Soft cover, online PDF, and data file. (2012)

Originally funded as WERF project U4R07.