{
  "abstract": "Nitrogen recovery from human excreta is advancing rapidly at the laboratory scale, yet its potential in full-scale water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) remains unrealized. To expedite the deployment of nitrogen recovery technology across diverse WRRF configurations, an agile and standardized framework is needed to predict plant-wide operational impacts and prioritize deployment pathways. Here, we developed and applied an open-source benchmarking framework comprising 18 representative WRRF configurations to evaluate three early-stage nitrogen recovery upgrades – upstream urine diversion (UD), mainstream hydrogel adsorption (HA), and sidestream electrochemical stripping (ECS). WRRFs’ operational performance is configuration-dependent: biological nutrient removal configurations, particularly the Johannesburg process and modified Bardenpho membrane bioreactor with anaerobic digestion, exhibit the largest operating expenditure savings for WRRFs across all three upgrades. Approaches that recover >40% of total nitrogen (UD covering 100% served population, or 100% UD, and HA) from the influent can reduce OPEX by 31% to 56%, whereas lower recovery (10% UD and ECS) still reduce OPEX by 10% to 15%. Together, these results identify promising deployment pathways for early-stage nitrogen recovery technologies and provide a scalable approach for evaluating other resource recovery upgrades.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "The Grainger College of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 205 N. Mathews Avenue, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America, 61801",
    "Hazen and Sawyer, 1601 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2040, Seattle, Washington, America, 98101",
    "Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering",
    "Rutgers, The State University of New"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 5,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Xinyi Zhang"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Zixuan Wang",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-4192-6147"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Saumitra Rai"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2,
        3
      ],
      "name": "Yalin Li"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Jeremy S. Guest"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/bk4mgdnk2hxc5.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.26434/chemrxiv.15005711/v2",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "bk4mgdnk2hxc5",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15005711/v2",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "2310|Wastewater Treatment and Nitrogen Removal"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7223101432",
  "pdf_url": "https://chemrxiv.org/doi/pdf/10.26434/chemrxiv.15005711/v2",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-16",
  "publisher": "American Chemical Society (ACS)",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/bk4mgdnk2hxc5.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:24Z",
      "native_id": "10.26434/chemrxiv.15005711",
      "source": "chemrxiv",
      "url": "https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15005711/v2"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "earth",
      "origin": "openalex:2310|Wastewater Treatment and Nitrogen Removal",
      "subfield": "environmental-science"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Accelerating the deployment of nitrogen diversion and recovery technologies in water resource recovery facilities",
  "title_text": "Accelerating the deployment of nitrogen diversion and recovery technologies in water resource recovery facilities",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:24Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/bk4mgdnk2hxc5",
  "venue": "ChemRxiv",
  "versions": []
}