Skip to content
DraconiticResearch
Search Sources API
190,869 studies31 sourcesUpdated 53 min ago
PreprintCC BYChemRxiv

Accelerating the deployment of nitrogen diversion and recovery technologies in water resource recovery facilities

  • Xinyi Zhang1,2
  • Zixuan Wang1
  • Saumitra Rai1
  • Yalin Li3,4
  • Jeremy S. Guest1
4 affiliations
  1. 1The 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
  2. 2Hazen and Sawyer, 1601 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2040, Seattle, Washington, America, 98101
  3. 3Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
  4. 4Rutgers, The State University of New
Open at sourcePDFDOICite

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.

Related

  1. Extending the Corsica Facilities up to SWOT Swath
    Pascal Bonnefond, Olivier Laurain, Pierre Exertier +8
    Marine GeodesyPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Full textEnvironmental science & pollutionOceanography & cryosphereHAL
  2. Accelerating anthropogenic influence on annual peak wood density and associated carbon accumulation across northern conifers
    Ziming Wang, Yanjiao Wang, Jianping Duan +3
    Communications Earth & EnvironmentPeer-reviewedCC BY 4.0General earth scienceCrossrefNature
  3. Spatial patterns and protection strategies for memorial facilities and sites of the War of Resistance in China
    Zhang Wenxi, Liang Qiantong, Wang Xi +2
    Open GeosciencesPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-NDFull textGeology & geochemistryDOAJ
  4. The development towards future-focused, environmentally sustainable healthcare facilities: A systematic literature review and research direction
    Ting Surfia Miana, Emidia Vagnoni
    Sustainable EnvironmentPeer-reviewedCC BYFull textEnvironmental science & pollutionDOAJ
  5. Systematic review protocol for evaluating the ecological effects of ground-mounted photovoltaic facilities on faunistic biodiversity in grasslands✰
    Wiltrut Koppensteiner, Arndt Piayda, Hanna Rae Martens +4
    MethodsXPeer-reviewedCC BYFull textEnvironmental science & pollutionEurope PMCEurope PMCPMC

Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@misc{zhang2026accelerating,
  title = {{Accelerating the deployment of nitrogen diversion and recovery technologies in water resource recovery facilities}},
  author = {Xinyi Zhang and Zixuan Wang and Saumitra Rai and Yalin Li and Jeremy S. Guest},
  howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15005711/v2},
  url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15005711/v2},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - UNPB
TI  - Accelerating the deployment of nitrogen diversion and recovery technologies in water resource recovery facilities
AU  - Xinyi Zhang
AU  - Zixuan Wang
AU  - Saumitra Rai
AU  - Yalin Li
AU  - Jeremy S. Guest
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/16
PB  - ChemRxiv
DO  - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15005711/v2
UR  - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15005711/v2
AB  - 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.
ER  -