Community-Oriented Translation and Evaluation
To be marketable, waste-derived products must concentrate resources and minimize contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals, viruses, and bacteria. Determining the fate of contaminants can address public concerns and facilitate regulatory approval for waste-derived products, two barriers to adoption of resource recovery. For chemical contaminants, we have screened thousands of pharmaceuticals and their metabolites in urine treatment processes with two major goals: correlating chemical structure with compound fate and identifying indicator pharmaceuticals to compare treatment processes. For biological contaminants, we have evaluated the fate of viruses in sewered and on-site sanitation systems in the U.S. and Senegal. Beyond contaminants, we conduct community-oriented research to advance state-of-the-art sanitation systems, including sensors to track reactive nitrogen in the environment. Globally, 4 billion people lack access to adequate collection and treatment of their waste, costing $260 billion annually in early deaths, productive time lost, and medical care related to diarrheal disease. Burgeoning populations already strain sewage systems in developing cities, which are projected to grow at unprecedented rates during the 21st century. The Tarpeh Lab sees these challenges as opportunities to design resource recovery into waste treatment without the inertia of 20th century infrastructure. Revenues from selling waste-derived products can be used to fund toilets and thus reduce diarrheal disease. In Nairobi, Kenya, we produced urine-derived fertilizers at lower cost than synthetic fertilizers in a full-scale excreta collection system. Our ongoing work in Dakar, Senegal and Tepoztlán, Mexico help validate our novel processes in developing contexts. Complementary to our fundamental research, the Tarpeh Lab studies how resource recovery processes are scaled to market by comparing them to existing approaches, conducting pilot studies, and identifying factors that facilitate and oppose adoption. We collaborate in this research with industrial partners, community organizations (e.g., Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice in Lowndes County, Alabama), and the Codiga Resource Recovery Center to inform our laboratory studies.
