Tech Briefs Magazine - August 2024 - 29

Wastewater Treatment and Remediation
Closed loop system for recovering ammonia from wastewater.
Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, FL
N
ASA Kennedy Space Center has developed
a water remediation treatment
system that utilizes an affordable media
that is highly selective for ammonia, allowing
large concentrations of ammonia in
wastewater to be reduced to levels less than
1 ppm. Following treatment, the media is
regenerated for reuse in the system and
ammonia is captured as a by-product.
Removing nitrogen pollutants, like ammonia,
is a critical environmental issue.
Nitrogen pollution is causing serious
changes to aquatic ecosystems; the primary
cause of which is insufficient municipal
water filtration processes allowing nitrogen
to seep into groundwater. NASA's Ammonia
Recovery System could be utilized
in a multitude of ways to remove nitrogen
from various wastewater sources.
The system was developed for smaller-scale,
space-based applications. However,
the technology is scalable for larger industrial
and municipal water treatment
applications. Implementation of the Ammonia
Recovery System could significantly
reduce nitrogen content from water treatment
processes, meaningfully improving
the quality of water.
This system offers a novel way to reduce
nitrogen water pollutants, while allowing
for the nitrogen to be collected and reused-
reducing environmental and public
health risks and providing an environmentally
friendly fertilizer option. NASA's
environmental solutions work to sus100.00µm
100.00µm
Media
before treating an ammonia waste stream (left), and media after treating an ammonia waste
stream (right). (Image: NASA)
tain life on Earth through space-based
technology The adaptable nature of this
system gives it potentially broad applications
in a wide variety of industries; it is
particularly ideal for on-site remediation
of wastewater in places like condo complexes,
hotels, and water parks.
Current methods of ammonia recovery
could not meet NASA's mission requirements,
so a new process was devised to
optimize for high ammonia selectivity,
simplicity, low volume, low power usage,
and zero contaminants in the effluent. To
do this, NASA designed a novel regenerable
struvite-formation system for the capture
of ammonia.
This system has three primary functions:
removal of ammonia from wastewater
using a media that is highly selective
for ammonia; capture of the
ammonia for later use (e.g., as a fertilizer);
and regeneration of the capture media
for reuse in the system.
This technology could be incorporated
into water treatment systems at various
stages including water treatment, effluent
polishing, resource reclamation, resource
recycling, gray water treatment, etc.
NASA is actively seeking licensees to
commercialize this technology. Please
contact NASA's Licensing Concierge at
Agency-Patent-Licensing@mail.nasa.gov
or call at 202-358-7432 to initiate licensing
discussions. For more information,
visit https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/
KSC-TOPS-36.
Pulling Carbon Dioxide Out of the Air
A novel approach to capture carbon from ambient environmental conditions.
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
E
ven as the world slowly begins to decarbonize
industrial processes, achieving
lower concentrations of atmospheric
carbon requires technologies that remove
existing carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere - rather than just prevent
the creation of it.
Typical carbon capture catches CO2
directly from the source of a carbon-inTech
Briefs, August 2024
tensive process. Ambient carbon capture,
or " direct air capture " (DAC), on
the other hand, can take carbon out of
typical environmental conditions and
serves as one weapon in the battle against
climate change, particularly as reliance
on fossil fuels begins to decrease and
with it, the need for point-of-source carbon
capture.
www.techbriefs.com
New research from Northwestern University
shows a novel approach to capture
carbon from ambient environmental
conditions that looks at the
relationship between water and carbon
dioxide in systems to inform the " moisture-swing "
technique, which captures
CO2 at low humidity and releases it at
high humidity. The approach incorpo29
https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/KSC-TOPS-36 https://www.techbriefs.com
Tech Briefs Magazine - August 2024

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