The Center for Sustainable and Distributed Fertility Development (CASFER) is a collaborative effort between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and five universities.
Paul Kohl (School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering) and Marta Hatzell (George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering) will lead the CASFER effort at Georgia Tech.
In the effort to combat climate change, many people have heard the slogan “closing the carbon cycle” – a global effort to replace carbon dioxide with something useful to reduce the harmful effects of pollution on the planet. Another environmental challenge is related not to carbon dioxide but to nitrogen. Now, an ambitious plan to close the nitrogen cycle is underway, with the potential to revolutionize agriculture in the United States and around the world.
The Georgia Institute of Technology will be part of CASFER, NSF’s Engineering Research Center (NSF-ERC), with four other universities. Supported by an initial grant of $26 million from NSF, CASFER seeks to transform the United States from nitrogen cycle pollution to a nitrogen cycle economy by developing new technologies and programs for capture, recycling, and extraction. Carbonated nitrogen-based fertilizers (NBFs). Georgia Tech is joined by Florida Agricultural and Technical University, Case Western Reserve University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Texas Tech University, which will lead the effort and serve as the CASFER center.
Nitrogen is used in many commercial applications, but one of the most important uses is in food NBFs. NBFs are removed from farms, but most of them are not used – 80% are washed and destroyed, ending up as water pollution. With support from NSF, this group of universities will try to recover and reuse nitrogen compounds, which are the most important part of fertilizers.
“When you’re removing pollution from water and turning it into a use, we’re taking a negative and turning it into a positive,” said Paul Kohl, Regents Professor and Thomas L. Gossage Chair in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. ChBE) and co-leader of the CASFER effort at Georgia Tech, along with Marta Hatzell, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “This process both reduces pollution and lowers the cost of farming.”
CASFER has three areas of focus to achieve its goals. The first one involves the measurement and analysis of data to identify new opportunities and places to collect wasted fertilizers and to determine exactly how fertilizers affect a personal environment.
The second area – Kohl and Hatzell’s focus – is the actual collection and separation of nitrogen compounds in the three types of environment where they often appear: agricultural production, livestock farms, and wastewater treatment plants. They will develop unique separation methods to extract nitrogen pollutants from different environments, creating new types of polymer membranes that work to separate and concentrate these compounds into solutions that can be converted for future use. The work will begin at Georgia Tech’s labs, but then the team will build testbeds — portable labs the size of pickup trucks — to test the separation methods in the field.
“All of our sorting technology will be modular, electrified, and mostly carbon-free,” says Hatzell. “Our overall goal is to design processes that produce new fertilizers or recover used fertilizers from waste at the same or lower cost than chemical production methods.”
The third area converts concentrated solutions into usable fertilizers. Humans have been making fertilizers the same way for over 100 years, using an expensive chemical process that requires natural gas – a scarce resource. CASFER researchers will develop alternative methods to create new fertilizers and strategies to reintroduce agricultural crops.
“One of the strengths of NSF’s Engineering Research Centers is their ability to bring together interdisciplinary academic and research teams to identify new approaches to thorny societal challenges,” said NSF Assistant Director for Engineering Susan Margulies. “Together with their test beds and industry partners, the centers innovate and translate effective and sustainable solutions.”
CASFER is poised to bring significant changes to the agricultural industry. Since the inception of the Engineering Research Centers program in 1985, NSF has awarded less than 100 grants to open ERCs, which are designed to foster innovation and collaboration between industry leaders, government agencies , and higher education institutions.
“For decades, NSF’s Engineering Research Centers have transformed technology and fostered American innovation through bold research, collaborative partnerships, and a deep commitment to inclusion and expansion. participation,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “NSF’s new facilities will continue the legacy of the nation’s life-improving impact.”
Looking to the future, universities will initiate workforce development initiatives such as training and education to prepare a new generation of farmers and scientists to work in the economy of nitrogen cycles.
Georgia Tech researchers involved in the grant include Kohl (Coordinator), Andrew Medford, and Joseph Scott from ChBE; Peter Hesketh (Lead Co-PI) and Hatzell (Lead Co-PI/Co-PI) from the Woodruff School; Mary-Lynn Realff from the School of Materials Science and Engineering; Lizanne DeStefano (EWD Lead) from CEISMC; and Jie Xu and Milad Navaei from the Georgia Tech Research Institute.
