Topic: Advancing Clean Energy and Water Solutions with Integrated Water-Energy Systems
When
This presentation was recorded on Friday, November 3, 2023, at 12:00 PM in ENR2 room S215.
If you would like to view this seminar, please visit our YouTube Channel, a direct link to this video is HERE
Kerri Hickenbottom
Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering
University of Arizona
"Advancing Clean Energy and Water Solutions with Integrated Water-Energy Systems"
Speaker Bio: Kerri Hickenbottom is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Arizona. She completed her B.S. degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees as a National Science Foundation COAMP-BD and Environmental Protection Agency STAR fellow in Environmental Science and Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. The Hickenbottom Environmental Research (HER) Lab’s mission is to advance the development of sustainable waste-to-resource systems through research, teaching, and outreach. HER Lab’s research takes a system-level approach to advance integrated engineered systems for treatment and recovery of nontraditional water and energy resources in decentralized settings. Dr. Hickenbottom’s research projects are highly collaborative and include potable water reuse and low-energy inland desalination, water-energy dependency in data centers, and stand-alone, integrated systems for concentrate management and zero-waste discharge.
Abstract: As water-stressed regions around the globe continue to explore desalination and potable water reuse as a nontraditional means of securing and augmenting freshwater supply, the effective management of concentrate streams generated by these treatment trains is becoming a major concern. Management of concentrate streams in inland regions is a key technology hurdle to overcome as conventional processes are timely, costly, and resource intensive, and often require the integration of one or more unit operations. Thus, there is an unmet need and multiple incentives for process intensification in inland desalination applications to reduce energy consumption and address water circularity. This presentation will discuss research on a an intensified solar-energy capture desalination system that integrates membrane distillation (MD) with a hybrid solar heat/PV collector to realize self-sustained desalination and zero-waste discharge (ZWD) of concentrate streams in inland and off-grid applications. Experimental results in conjunction with life-cycle impact and cost assessments are used to evaluate the technical, economic, and environmental impacts of this technology; thus, furthering development and implementation of concentrate management technologies, and inspiring the advancement of a future generation of self-sustained treatment systems.