Engineering professor leads effort to help Reno/Sparks
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By John Trent
Few commodities are as precious as water in arid western Nevada, and a team of University researchers are helping the Cities of Reno and Sparks improve the effectiveness of their use of treated wastewater.
“Our main impetus is to try to help the City of Reno and the City of Sparks save some money and provide some beneficial information for their water reuse program,” said Eric Marchand, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, principal investigator of the effort. “This could be especially useful if our study helps reduce the amount of fertilizer that needs to be applied for landscaping and agriculture projects receiving reuse water.”
Currently, both the City of Reno and the City of Sparks, like many cities around the country, reuse water from their jointly managed regional water treatment facility. A treated form of wastewater, known as effluent, is typically used for irrigation of public open spaces, such as parks or golf courses, especially during the summer.
The University researchers are helping the area’s two major municipalities take a closer look at a byproduct of the water reclamation process called centrate.
Centrate comes from biosolids that are dewatered by centrifuges, with the liquid byproduct (centrate) often returned to the head of the treatment facility. The researchers are conducting two studies, running in parallel fashion, on how centrate can be used as a fertilizer to supplement the water reused by the Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility in agriculture and landscaping.
Marchand, along with colleagues Amy Childress and Edward Kolodziej of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is conducting an analysis of centrate composition and is evaluating various disinfection methods.
Thus far, they have found that centrate contains a high concentration of the major components of modern fertilizers — nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Although the work is still preliminary, the researchers have not found harmful traces of other components.
“Centrate needs to be disinfected with chlorine or another disinfectant in order for it to be used,” Marchand said. “We’re assessing how much chlorine it would take and how this would impact its suitability for reuse.”
Working in parallel with Marchand are College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources (CABNR) faculty, Shai Koussevitzky and Ron Mittler in the Department of Biochemistry. The CABNR researchers are looking at any possible toxic effects of centrate on plants, with early results indicating that there is no toxic effect.
A second greenhouse phase is now starting, Koussevitzky said.
“We are going to test the effect centrate has on the growth of several plant species with significance to the northern Nevada economy and compare it to commercial fertilizers,” he said.
The project started in the spring and is expected to be completed in fall 2008.
John Trent is senior editor in University Communications.
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