CHEE Seminar: Treavor Boyer
Monday, October 23, 2023 – 3 p.m.
Treavor Boyer
Professor, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment (SSEBE)
Chair, Environmental Engineering
Arizona State University
“Building-Wide Urine Diversion: Radical Change in Incremental Steps”
Speech & Hearing Building, Room 205
Social Hour immediately following the seminar in Old Engineering 157 (Graduate Student Lounge) at 4 p.m.
ABSTRACT
The current approach to wastewater management wastes valuable resources—potable water, fertilizer quality nutrients, and energy, while at the same time pollutes the biosphere with excess nutrients, contaminants of emerging concern, and greenhouse gases. The current failure of wastewater management is attributable to combining disparate waste streams (e.g., greywater and urine) and a ‘one size fits all’ approach to treatment. Of the waste streams that compose domestic wastewater, urine accounts for approximately 1% of wastewater by volume yet urine contributes greater than 50% by mass of the nitrogen, phosphorus, and pharmaceuticals to wastewater. As such, urine diversion has been proposed as a more sustainable alternative to conventional wastewater management because it has the potential to conserve water and energy, recover nutrients for fertilizer, and protect ecological and human health from trace contaminants. Despite the promises of urine diversion and treatment, it has not been widely implemented because of an absence of engineering strategies that are efficient in contaminant removal, practical to implement, and acceptable to society. This presentation will highlight ongoing work in our group that seeks to advance both the basic understanding and practical implementation of urine diversion. Topics to be discussed include urine collection and storage, nutrient recovery technologies, implementation in buildings, life cycle environmental impacts, and stakeholder perceptions.
BIOSKETCH
Treavor Boyer is a professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment and program chair for environmental engineering at ASU. His research interests span water quality and treatment with numerous projects on innovative applications of ion exchange technology such as PFAS removal from impacted water and nutrient recovery from source separated urine. Dr. Boyer is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award entitled “Sustainable Urine Processes through Integration of Education and Research (SUPER).” He is actively engaged in professional service activities including AZ Water/AWWA, Board of Directors for AEESP and editor at Water Research X. Dr. Boyer earned his Ph.D. and MS degrees in environmental engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his BS degree in chemical engineering from the University of Florida. Dr. Boyer was previously a faculty member in the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences at the University of Florida.