The University of Connecticut recently announced that it has been selected to receive $3M in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The funding is part of the Realize Energy-rich Compound Opportunities Valorizing Extraction from Refuse waters (RECOVER) program, which aims to reduce American dependence on critical mineral imports by establishing new, secure domestic supply chains.
“The University of Connecticut is a national leader in developing sustainable water and energy technologies,” says UConn Engineering dean JC Zhao. “This project builds upon UConn’s strengths in separations technology, wastewater treatment, and process systems engineering, and we are excited to support a growing national need for technologies that help the United States tap new sources of critical minerals that are essential to its economy.”
The team will be led by Professor Jeffrey McCutcheon, who is the Director of the Connecticut Center for Applied Separations Technologies and the General Electric Professor of Advanced Manufacturing in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He is joined by Professor Baikun Li (from the UConn School of Civil & Environmental Engineering) and Professor George Bollas (chemical and biomolecular engineering). USP Technologies, Brown & Caldwell, and the Greater Lawrence Sanitary District (GLSD) join the team as industrial partners.
“The discoveries happening at UConn Engineering reflect a broader mission: to fuel America’s innovation engine through transformative research in water, energy, and resource recovery,” McCutcheon says. “With ARPA-E’s support, our team is advancing technologies that can unlock new domestic sources of critical minerals while improving the sustainability of wastewater treatment systems nationwide. This project demonstrates how cutting-edge separations science can strengthen U.S. economic resilience, reduce reliance on foreign supply chains, and create new pathways for recovering essential resources. It’s the kind of nationally consequential engineering that UConn is uniquely positioned to deliver.”
UConn and its collaborators will demonstrate a hybrid system capable of recovering phosphorus and ammonia from wastewater as high-value liquid products. The integrated process will combine ceramic vacuum membrane distillation to extract ammonia and bipolar membrane electrodialysis to capture phosphorus as phosphoric acid. Dubbed the Intensified Anaerobic Digestion with Resource Recovery (IADRR) process, the process will be derisked in Storrs before launching a field demonstration at GLSD in Massachusetts.
Additional information about the Connecticut Center for Applied Separations Technologies can be found online.
The University of Connecticut is a national leader among public research universities, with more than 32,000 students seeking answers to critical questions in classrooms, labs, and the community. A culture of innovation drives this pursuit of knowledge throughout the University’s network of campuses. Connecticut’s commitment to higher education helps UConn attract students and globally renowned faculty members who thrive in the most competitive environments. Our school pride is fueled by a history of success that has made us a standout in Division I athletics. UConn fosters a diverse and vibrant culture that meets the needs and seizes the opportunities of a dynamic global society.
