Greenhouse Gas Reductions
Compared to traditional nutrient treatment systems, our process reduces nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. Nitrous oxide is recognized by the EPA as a pollutant with over 300 times the global warming potential of CO2. This creates the opportunity for potential carbon credits.
Life Cycle Energy Reductions
The essence of our technology and process is that it captures energy that is otherwise lost. BOD is in a sense a measure of hydrocarbon energy. Instead of fully breaking down the hydrocarbons, we can convert them into other usable and higher-value hydrocarbons (e.g. bioplastic resins) while also making fertilizer and simultaneously recycling nitrogen and phosphorus.
This is more efficient than simply destroying the energy via aerobic digestion wastewater treatment or converting it into biogas and in turn relatively low-value electricity via anaerobic digestion. The production of fertilizers is another energy-intensive process. For example, a ton of organic fertilizer produced by our process may require minimal additional energy, but nitrogen fertilizer today is currently produced by using natural gas, and phosphorus is mined from rocks using machinery requiring a lot of energy.
We can also reduce the amount of energy used in wastewater treatment in comparison to traditional systems that reduce BOD. Our system has the ability to use sunlight to drive the reaction. This means we have the potential to be largely solar-powered in areas where space is not an issue. |
