An Integrated Systems Model for Sustainably Managing Dairy and Food Wastes

New York is the third largest dairy state in the U.S and it generates over 22 million tons of dairy and food wastes per year. Current waste management practices involve storage of untreated wastes in landfills and lagoons which pose significant environmental risks to river basins and lakes due to runoff and climate impacts resulting from fugitive methane emissions. Disposal and treatment of these wastes is typically viewed as a financial burden, but with the right combination of process technologies, it can become a resource for energy and nutrient recovery.

Investigators

Jefferson Tester
David Croll Sesquicentennial Fellow and Professo

Partner Organizations

Cornell University

Date approved

October 01, 2020
Current TRL
4

Formation of RAPID Center for Process Modeling

RAPID aims to improve energy efficiency, reduce feedstock waste, and improve productivity by promoting modular chemical process intensification (PI) for processing industries in the U.S. manufacturing sector. To facilitate consistent and objective evaluation of performance metrics of various PI projects, RAPID has established this program to support and/or perform first principles-based process modeling for both baseline and intensified processes.

Investigators

Chau-Chyun Chen
Professor

Date approved

July 01, 2017

An Experimentally Verified Physical Properties Database for Sorbent Selection and Simulation

This project works to close the gap seen in the intensified process fundamentals area around how to enable modeling tools through the presentation of useful data for phenomena such as adsorption in complex systems. It looks to use meta-analysis of available databases to determine what data can currently be used with statistical confidence in its accuracy.

Investigators

David S. Sholl

Date approved

November 01, 2017
Current TRL
3

RAPID Reaction Software Ecosystem

Intensified processes are spatially and/or temporally coupled systems needing new modeling tools that go beyond systems analysis, and integrate reactor models with molecular scale models of chemical reactions. Current software at the quantum scale (density functional theory (DFT)) and the reactor scale (e.g., CFD) are widespread. In contrast, kinetics codes, especially for heterogeneous catalysis are at the proof-of-concept level due to outstanding technical barriers.

Investigators

Dion Vlachos
Allan and Myra Ferguson Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Date approved

November 01, 2017
Current TRL
5

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