James Moberly
University of Idaho, ID·Engineering
Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for plant growth and the backbone of modern fertilizer, but it is a finite resource and much of what farms apply washes into rivers and lakes, where it feeds algal blooms and degrades water quality. Wastewater treatment plants concentrate phosphorus and are therefore a logical place to recover it and recycle it.
- Fields
Engineering
Earth & Environmental Science
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
phosphorus recovery
biomining
wastewater treatment
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Develop an encapsulated biological material in which phosphorus accumulating organisms, microbes that store large amounts of phosphorus, are immobilized within a polymer structure for use in wastewater treatment.
- Evaluate how the encapsulated material performs in the wastewater environment and how its internal microbial populations shift over time and across a range of operating conditions.
- Combine experimental performance data with process modeling to determine reaction rates and inform scale-up of a modular phosphorus recovery process.
- Compare the environmental burden of the new recovery process with existing phosphorus recovery methods using life cycle analysis.
More about the research
The catch is that today's recovery methods are hard to control reliably.
Why it matters
Phosphorus runoff from agriculture pollutes rivers, lakes and streams, while phosphorus itself must be mined and is used in very large quantities by farming. A controllable way to recover phosphorus from existing wastewater treatment plants could protect water resources, cut nutrient pollution, and return a usable nutrient to the supply chain. The project also offers training for wastewater treatment workers and students.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ian Bradley
University at Buffalo, NY·Engineering·Early-career
Identify the environmental and operating factors that improve total nitrogen and phosphorus removal in algae-based wastewater treatment, using lab-scale systems that grow algae on wastewater.
Caitlyn Butler
University of Massachusetts, MA·Engineering
Demonstrate that oxygenic photogranules, dense clusters of algae, cyanobacteria and bacteria, stay intact and grow stably in nutrient-poor secondary effluent by measuring granule formation, size distribution, density, porosity and shear resistance.
Erica Hartmann
Northwestern University, IL·Microbiology & Immunology
Develop and validate methods to genetically manipulate and reboot bacteriophages infecting Gordonia, the filamentous bacteria behind sludge bulking, and test phage-based control of them in laboratory-scale bioreactors.
The school
University of Idaho: 8 labs on PI Pages, $140M a year on research, 71 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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