Center for Desert Adapted Water Resource Recovery

The Center for Desert Adapted Water Resource Recovery will develop a small-scale, distributed model for local wastewater treatment, water re-use and nutrient/fertilizer production. Industry partners, higher education and local entities forming this center collaborate to create a metabolic engineering system with specific targets on regional needs contributing to decarbonization and energy efficiency in the water resource recovery sector. Working from a geographic focus on hot arid regions of the world, climate conditions in the desert southwest of Arizona make Arizona State University a prime research and development location. The team envisions a wide range of useful applications, including water resource and recovery facilities (WRRF), refugee encampments from displacements due to climate disruption, war or famine – conditions destined to become increasingly common in the future. Application to market sectors on the higher end of the socio-economic scale can be imagined to include new community real estate developments, housing developments, high-end resorts, and new/established agribusinesses (poultry, fish, etc) that produce wastewater.

Explore some of our sister centers and related efforts:
NEWT Center
Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation
ASU School for Sustainability in the Built Environment