For true sustainability, a real opportunity to waste

By ALEXANDER ORLOV

Human beings like to eat. Those with the means eat as much as they can, and those who are hungry would eat more if they could.

Producing food requires agriculture and energy, and sometimes the demand outpaces supply. But here’s good news: We can use waste from existing food to create new agriculture and produce energy.

Connecting food, energy and water areas is at the forefront of current thinking in sustainability, and why I got into chemical engineering.

Mined phosphate rock is the primary chemical phosphorus fertilizer used around the world. Mining and refining it is energy-intensive, and it is widely accepted that the world’s reserve of rock phosphate will be depleted in the next several decades.

The National Academy of Science’s agricultural-research priority specifically lists “advanced approaches to reuse phosphorus” as one of research breakthroughs to be addressed by 2030. Developing innovative phosphorus-recovery solutions is one the most pressing issues, embodying many elements of the food, energy and water nexus

To understand complex “systems within systems,” the entire lifecycle of phosphorus must be considered. In our current research, we’ve developed a novel approach that offsets the energy required to produce agricultural fertilizers with new biofuels, all while recycling food and other waste products and minimizing agricultural runoff.

Our team uses both fundamental and applied tools to understand the mechanistic aspects of fertilizer and energy production. These are based on an established collaboration between the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Stony Brook University and the City College of New York.

Among other research methods, we utilized X-ray tomography, a new generation of in-situ infra-red spectroscopy and state-of-the-art reactor studies to understand the mechanistic aspects of thermal conversion. We focused specifically on the utilization of waste products and the development of new agricultural amendments, such as biochar, a stable, carbon-rich charcoal made from temperature-treated biomass.

Our progress has been summarized in a paper recently published in Energy & Fuels, a peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Chemical Society. In the paper, we describe the thermal treatment of seafood waste to develop phosphorus fertilizers.

Transforming waste into useful products is the best way to improve the sustainability of our society, secure future food supplies and make the United States more energy independent.