You could say that Doug Call has a healthy obsession with wastewater. He gets \u201cexcited\u201d about wastewater\u2009\u2014\u2009his word, not ours\u2009\u2014\u2009because of what it contains: water, chemical bonds containing energy and a couple of essential nutrients for plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Call is an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. Much of his work involves turning the microbes found in wastewater into electricity, which he describes as \u201cvery sci-fi\u201d stuff that could help treatment plants reduce energy costs by producing their own energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His team also works to help treatment facilities be more efficient in removing phosphorus\u2009\u2014\u2009one of those essential nutrients\u2009\u2014\u2009from wastewater. Treatment facilities have been using biological methods\u2009\u2014\u2009think sci-fi microbes again\u2009\u2014\u2009to remove phosphorus from wastewater for years. The microbes do that by vacuuming up the phosphorus so that it can be more easily extracted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Removing the phosphorus has a couple of key benefits: The phosphorus can be used to reduce the reliance on mined phosphorus, a non-renewable resource, as an essential ingredient in fertilizer, and it limits the amount of phosphorus in water runoff that can lead to algae blooms that threaten marine life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Call says there are periods of instabilty when the microbes are not as successful at converting the phosphorus into a solid. His team\u2019s challenge is to figure out what causes those periods\u2009\u2014\u2009possibilities include changing weather patterns or periods of heavy rain or drought\u2009\u2014\u2009and then search for a solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBecause at the heart of it is the microbial community,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to have the right microbes doing the right things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n\n\n\n\n
You could say that Doug Call has a healthy obsession with wastewater. He gets \u201cexcited\u201d about wastewater\u2009\u2014\u2009his word, not ours\u2009\u2014\u2009because of what it contains: water, chemical bonds containing energy and a couple of essential nutrients for plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Call is an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. Much of his work involves turning the microbes found in wastewater into electricity, which he describes as \u201cvery sci-fi\u201d stuff that could help treatment plants reduce energy costs by producing their own energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His team also works to help treatment facilities be more efficient in removing phosphorus\u2009\u2014\u2009one of those essential nutrients\u2009\u2014\u2009from wastewater. Treatment facilities have been using biological methods\u2009\u2014\u2009think sci-fi microbes again\u2009\u2014\u2009to remove phosphorus from wastewater for years. The microbes do that by vacuuming up the phosphorus so that it can be more easily extracted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Removing the phosphorus has a couple of key benefits: The phosphorus can be used to reduce the reliance on mined phosphorus, a non-renewable resource, as an essential ingredient in fertilizer, and it limits the amount of phosphorus in water runoff that can lead to algae blooms that threaten marine life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Call says there are periods of instabilty when the microbes are not as successful at converting the phosphorus into a solid. His team\u2019s challenge is to figure out what causes those periods\u2009\u2014\u2009possibilities include changing weather patterns or periods of heavy rain or drought\u2009\u2014\u2009and then search for a solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBecause at the heart of it is the microbial community,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to have the right microbes doing the right things.\u201d<\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Engineering team works to figure out effective ways to extract phosphorus from wastewater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":4226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"views\/single-immersive.blade.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-immersive-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"backgroundColor\":\"green_400\",\"displayCategoryID\":5,\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"Engineering team works to figure out effective ways to extract phosphorus from wastewater.\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[51,272,338,363,798,948,1247],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"displayCategory":{"term_id":5,"name":"Best Bets","slug":"best-bets","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":39,"filter":"raw"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4225"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=4225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}