When
Monday, December 8, 2025, 10:00 a.m.
Eric Marchand
Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Nevada, Reno
"Advanced Water Reuse Technologies: Removal of Dissolved Organic Nitrogen and Implications for Water Reuse"
Harshbarger 118A-A1
ABSTRACT: The Water Reuse Consortium is a federally-funded research and education program with academic partners including the University of Arizona, the University of Southern California (USC), and the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). One of the research thrusts at UNR relates to studying advanced water treatment technologies for water reuse tailored for inland communities where membrane based treatment processes may not be a feasible option. For these applications, interest is growing for utilizing enhanced coagulation in conjunction with other advanced technologies to remove dissolved chemical species as part of a sequential, multiple barrier treatment scheme. Up to 85% of the nitrogen in treated wastewater effluent is made up of dissolved organic nitrogen (DON), which can be a challenge to remove using conventional technologies. The presence of DON in reclaimed water can pose adverse effects in water reuse practices, potentially serving as a precursor of carcinogenic nitrogenous disinfection byproducts (N-DBPs). During this presentation, I will provide an overview of recent studies conducted by my research group addressing DON characterization and removal utilizing multiple treatment processes. This work spans various scales from bench-scale studies addressing DON characterization (e.g., polarity and molecular weight distribution) to pilot-scale studies addressing the effectiveness of enhanced coagulation, ozonation, and biologically active carbon (BAC) treatment under real-world treatment conditions. Recently, research has been performed to investigate the extent of disinfection byproduct formation following different treatment strategies. Together, these studies highlight the effectiveness of various treatment technologies targeting DON removal in a water reuse treatment train.
BIOSKETCH: Eric Marchand is an environmental engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he has been on the faculty since 2000. He earned BS and MS degrees in civil engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno (1994, 1996) and a PhD in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder (2000). His primary area of teaching and research focus on water quality factors associated with water reclamation/reuse and nutrient removal process dynamics in natural and engineered systems. Marchand is a registered professional engineer and teaches both introductory and applied water and wastewater design courses, environmental biotechnology and engineering hydrology. In addition to his teaching and research interests, Marchand serves as associate director of the Nevada Center for Water Resiliency, Research Director for the Nevada Water Innovation Institute and he was previously the associate chair for Undergraduate Affairs within the CEE Department.