Integrated water and energy systems are fundamental to social, economic, and environmental well-being.  Furthermore, energy and water are two critical infrastructures considered by the U.S. government so vital that their breakdown or destruction would have a debilitating effect on national security, economic development, public health, and safety.  Unfortunately, the failure to integrate water and energy systems with appropriate cultural models of local knowledge, institutions, and resources has limited adoption of innovative technologies and strategies to achieve sustainability.  Accordingly, the goal of this PIRE project was to initiate a cultural shift in our individual and university research and education programs by developing international research competence and building capacity through global partnerships. Our overarching research question was: can effective, geographically-appropriate, and culturally relevant engineered systems be established that utilize wastewater as a resource for recovery of energy, water, and nutrients? The U.S. academic partners were the University of South Florida (Tampa) and the University of Virgin Islands, a historically black university. Our project had academic and community partners located in the Caribbean and Europe.

Examples of specific technological achievements advanced through this project were: (1) creation and deployment of anaerobic membrane bioreactors that treat wastewater with improved recovery of energy and reclaimed water, (2) improved operation of anaerobic digesters that treat domestic and agricultural waste streams to not only optimize energy production but also provide safe effluents that can reuse valuable nutrient fertilizers, (3) identifying critical factors for growing algae on municipal and agricultural wastewaters so the produced algae can be used as a fuel or animal feed, and (4) reclaiming safe water from photosynthesis-based wastewater treatment systems to reduce health risks for farmers and consumers of food irrigated with the reclaimed wastewater.  

Through assessment across the life cycle of different technologies developed and improved during this project, it was determined that the environmental impacts of a resource recovery technology depends not only on the type of technology and its configuration, but also the scale of implementation and geographic location the technology is implemented.  Through systems modeling, we learned that the strategies facilitating behavior changes in a household or community result in significant improvement in adopting new wastewater technologies that integrate resource recovery.   The research also demonstrated that engineering, environmental science, and applied anthropology impact society beyond science and technology in the U.S. and international contexts. For example, recovering valuable resources such as water, nutrients used for fertilizer, and energy from domestic wastewater safeguards human and environmental health, which creates conditions conducive to productive economies through secured livelihoods. We also observed that on-site wastewater treatment systems and processes that sequester fertilizer nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) for use in household gardens can contribute to local food production, facilitate tourism by reducing nutrient pollution in recreational waterways, while supporting the livelihoods of fishing communities.

Education and research opportunities were provided to students from the University of Virgin Islands through research support and creation of a 2+3 undergraduate dual-degree program that provided 25 under-represented minority students majoring in math and physics with access to a degree in engineering.  Several educational partnerships were developed with the U.S. Peace Corps to take advantage of their unique training in language, culture, and participatory approaches to community assessment to help build global competency of early career scientists and engineers.

Our project provided direct financial support to a diverse group of 37 graduate students (34 were U.S. citizens) majoring in engineering, anthropology, marine science, and science education.  Of the 37 graduate students provided financial support, 73% were female and 43% were underrepresented minorities. Our project was also able to provide substantive international research collaboration experiences to develop global research competency for 27 graduate STEM students and several undergraduates from the University of Virgin Islands. In addition to the PIRE supported international research experiences, we also developed several additional opportunities for undergraduate or graduate STEM students to have an international research experience that was tied to their education.

Our project team led development of several technological inventions and a special issue of a peer reviewed journal devoted to high impact papers on the topic of innovative global solutions for bioenergy production.  Our team also led development of a journal paper that identified and described 12 Grand Challenges to advance the discipline of environmental engineering to help achieve sustainability in the world’s developing regions.  A series of meetings led by our team resulted in $47.5 million award from the Green Climate Fund for a project that will shift production and distribution of water in the Caribbean from fossil fuel energy to renewable energy, mainstream gender, promote stakeholder engagement, and develop a community private sector partnership in water infrastructure design.  The Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (Belize) was awarded the grant, the Barbados Water Authority is the executing agency, and the University of South Florida and University of West Indies are university partners. 

Last Modified: 09/11/2019
Modified by: James R Mihelcic