Sustainability Commons^™

Disrupting Desalination: Novel Energy Efficient Technologies For Hypersaline Brines, Ngai Yin Yip

Sustainability Seminar Series

Management and treatment of hypersaline brines, e.g., produced water from oil and gas extraction, zero liquid discharge effluent, and flue gas desulfurization wastewater, are of growing environmental importance. Prevailing practice of distilling brines is highly energy-intensive and costly because the evaporation of water is enthalpically unfavorable. Here, we present two novel technologies for hypersaline desalination: cascading osmotically mediated reverse osmosis (COMRO) and temperature swing solvent extraction (TSSE). The first technology, COMRO, utilizes the novel design of bilateral countercurrent reverse osmosis stages to lessening the osmotic pressure difference across the membrane, thereby simultaneously depressing the hydraulic pressure needed and reducing energy …

Incentives For Coastal Persistence, Porter Hoagland

Sustainability Seminar Series

Inundation, erosion, and property damages and losses are being observed at increasing rates in coastal areas. It is now well-recognized that rising sea levels, increases in storm intensities, and inadequate structural protections are contributing to the significant physical destruction of and economic losses to coastal properties. Scientists, coastal zone managers, and the general public have begun to call for implementing policies of resilience and adaptation to these losses, including retreating from the coast, yet humans continue to live—and even increase their presence—along the nation’s shorelines. What causes such persistence? It has become commonplace to identify lower-than-actuarially-fair premiums for participation in …

How Do Polar Ice Sheets And Sea Level Behave Under A Changing Climate?, Sandra Passchier

Sustainability Seminar Series

Nearly 3 billion people live within 100 km of the coastline, many in large urban centers. In predictions of sea level rise, the future role of polar ice sheets is one of the most critical uncertainties under the present extreme rise in greenhouse forcing of the climate system. This talk will show how geoscientists address the Earth system processes involved in melting ice sheets under warmer climates, and introduce the objectives of an upcoming deepsea drilling expedition to the area with greatest ice loss in West Antarctica.

Tracking Soil Signatures Of The 16 Mile Fire, Delaware State Forest, Pa, Jennifer Callanan

Sustainability Seminar Series

The high intensity 16 Mile Fire that burned in the Delaware State Forest, PA was not typical in forests of this region. This study tracks the chemical signature in the soil as a result of the combustion of biomass and associated ash inputs. Chemical signatures related directly to the fire impacted soils were observed, with some remaining after one year’s time. These lasting signatures may influence the future structure of the forest. The results of this study begin to address implications of high intensity fire in forests of the northeast as changing climatic conditions may begin to influence their fire …

Emerging Models Of Nitrogen And Carbon Cycling In Engineered Wastewater Treatment Processes, Kartik Chandran

Sustainability Seminar Series

The engineered nitrogen cycle provides a rich framework to study the structure, function and interactions within mixed microbial communities. The knowledge objtained from such studies also allows us to harness the potential of such communities towards achieving multiple goals including the production of clean water, treatment of drinking water and the synthesis of commodity chemicals and fuels, among others. Within the spectrum of engineered nitrogen cycling processes, autotrophic biological nitrogen removal (BNR) offers an energy and resource efficient alternate to conventionally followed approaches. The successful implementation of autotrophic BNR processes is contingent upon the selective retention of aerobic and anaerobic …

The Role Of Ground-Source Heat Pumps In Achieving New Jersey’S 80% By 2050 Goal: Addressing Emissions From The Buildings Sector, Sheryl Tembe

Sustainability Seminar Series

Emissions reduction and renewable energy sources are vital to health of New Jersey. Governor Murphy’s executive orders and recent legislation target actions to improve our environment and create a sustainable future. The buildings sector is recognized as the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in New Jersey behind transportation, with the majority of emissions due to fossil fuel-based heating and cooling. To reach state’s goal of 80% emissions reduction by 2050, reduction strategies for the built environment must implement technologies that displace fossil fuels and maximize clean and low-carbon electricity. Heat pumps are a key technology because of their …

Growing A Sustainable City: The Question Of Urban Agriculture, Hamil Pearsall

Sustainability Seminar Series

This presentation examines urban agriculture in Philadelphia and highlights the challenges of institutionalizing this historically informal urban activity into formal city policy over the last two decades. Urban agriculture has become a symbol of Philadelphia’s economic revitalization, sustainability, and increasingly, its gentrification. Often characterized by advocates as an urban panacea, gardening and farming seem to promise solutions to many different urban problems, such as blighted vacant lots, food insecurity, stormwater runoff, and neighborhood decline. However, questions of land tenure, the use of economic resources, and the long-term viability of urban agriculture shape the political discourse about the future of growing …

How Good Is Bicycling For The Environment?, Mark Chopping

Sustainability Seminar Series

Bicycling has been promoted as a means to reduce our dependence on climate-warming fossil fuel burning, clean the air in our streets, promote personal health, and fight widespread obesity. It is often postulated that there are obvious environmental benefits associated with increasing participation in cycling as a transportation alternative, since the bicycles’ fuel is the banana and/or the muffin. This presentation will discuss why mass bicycling might not be quite as good for the environment as you may imagine – though it is still very, very good indeed.

Exploiting Synchrotron “Light” To Study Chemistry Of Trace Elements In Soils And Plants, Ryan Tappero

Sustainability Seminar Series

Biogeochemical studies often require characterization of elemental abundances and speciation in samples that are chemically and physically heterogeneous at the micrometer scale. Synchrotron radiation sources are ideal for developing high intensity, highly-focused X-ray probes for interrogating the speciation, transport, and reactions of trace elements in heterogeneous earth and biological materials with detection sensitivities in the attogram range and spatial resolutions less than 1 micrometer.

X-ray Fluorescence Microprobe (XFM) is a new, multi-modal X-ray fluorescence microscope recently installed at the National Synchrotron Light Source-II (NSLS-II) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. XFM has capabilities for X- ray micro-fluorescence (μ-XRF) imaging and tomography, X-ray …

Heterogeneous Photo-Fenton Reactions And Hybridization With Ceramic Membrane Filtration, Wen Zhang

Sustainability Seminar Series

No abstract provided.

Is There A Home For Agroforestry In Nutrient Credit Trading?, John Munsell

Sustainability Seminar Series

Agroforestry riparian buffers and upslope contour plantings provide environmental and economic benefits without eliminating annual farming opportunities. A public/private partnership in Virginia is leading a project titled Conservation Credit for Agroforestry Production (C-CAP) to study the potential for agroforestry to generate profitable credits in private nutrient trading markets. Phosphorus and nitrogen delivered to stream edges are modeled across a sample of agroforestry project sites. Results are being studied to determine financial profitability and relationships to Total Maximum Daily Loads. Research is also being conducted on tree-tube effectiveness, site preparation strategies, plant-water relations on contour, nitrogen fixer intercropping, and financial risk. …

10,000 Years Of Ice Sheet Change In Baffin Bay, Nicolas Young

Sustainability Seminar Series

The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) is the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere with a sea-level equivalent of 7.3 m and is expected to be a key contributor to 21st century (and beyond) sea-level rise. Estimates of GrIS-induced sea-level rise are dependent upon numerical ice-sheet models, but these models require some degree of “spin-up” or tuning to test model validity before forward modeling can commence. Within this framework, well-constrained geological records of GrIS change provide important spatial and temporal benchmarks for which to test numerical ice-sheet models. Of particular interest is reconstructing and modeling the behavior of the GrIS …