New York is the third largest dairy state in the U.S and it generates over 22 million tons of dairy and food wastes per year. Current waste management practices involve storage of untreated wastes in landfills and lagoons which pose significant environmental risks to river basins and lakes due to runoff and climate impacts resulting from fugitive methane emissions. Disposal and treatment of these wastes is typically viewed as a financial burden, but with the right combination of process technologies, it can become a resource for energy and nutrient recovery.

Water-stressed regions are exploring more nontraditional water sources and energy intensive technologies such as reverse osmosis (RO) to secure and augment their freshwater supply. As RO effectively rejects most of the dissolved species and recovers approximately 50 to 80% of water depending on water source, it also generates a relatively large concentrate waste stream. Management of concentrate streams in inland applications is the key technology hurdle to overcome as it often requires the integration of one or more unit operations.

Membrane gas separation is a financially significant and technologically critical component of the gas purification industry as it offers capital and operating cost advantages compared to other gas separation methods such as distillation, absorption, and adsorption. Many new polymer membrane materials have been proposed in recent years, but too often the cost of those materials and the inability to source commercial quantities prevent membrane manufacturers from developing new products.

The goal of this project is to provide a near term technology solution for the distributed generation of renewable hydrogen for fuel cell vehicle applications. This project will investigate a novel Caustic Aqueous Phase Electrochemical Reforming (CAPER) process on an oxigenated hydrocarbon, liquid ethanol in this instance, to make strides towards the DOE’s long-term cost target of $4/kg of hydrogen at the dispenser.

Metal halide salts such as magnesium chloride have been demonstrated to be promising candidates for ammonia storage materials to enable applications such as intermittent energy storage, and distributed fertilizer production. Ammonia exiting a synthesis reactor can be separated from nitrogen and hydrogen by absorption into magnesium chloride.