Princeton University
To conduct a field study that will quantify greenhouse gas emissions and ammonia from the wastewater and agricultural waste systems
Various industrial processes are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, but without good evidence on how different industrial sectors contribute to emissions, policymakers are left without reliable data to help inform regulatory efforts. In particular, wastewater management facilities and agricultural waste processing sites generate methane and nitrous oxide, both powerful greenhouse gases, and also serve as the source of local air pollutants, such as ammonia. However, information about the magnitude of emissions from these sites, and how emissions differ across such sites in different regions, is poorly known. Without baseline information, it is difficult to design even basic greenhouse gas management strategies, like how to quantify emissions reductions from these facilities. This grant funds a project team led by Mark Zondlo at Princeton University and Francesca Hopkins at the University of California, Riverside to equip and deploy two mobile laboratories—technologically-outfitted cars and vans—that are designed to take precise emissions measurements at multiple scales around these sites. By partnering with non-governmental organizations, these mobile laboratories will monitor multiple wastewater management and agricultural waste processing sites on both the East Coast and West Coast. The compiled data will provide one of the best sources of evidence about the scale of emissions at these sites and have the potential to inform new modes of management for emissions produced by these industrial processes.