Northwestern Events Calendar

Oct
5
2018

EES Seminar: May Wu

When: Friday, October 5, 2018
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM CT

Where: Technological Institute, A230, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Contact: Tierney Acott   (847) 491-3257

Group: McCormick - Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE)

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

Water Use, Water Quality, and Water Resource Availability

Abstract

Water use, water quality, and the demand on water resource for energy production is an integral part of the Food-Energy-Water sustainability. Energy industry has faced the challenges of declining fresh water availability from local sources as a result of increased and competing demands, resource depletion, and increased extreme weather events. Uncertainty in water resource availability and water quality can affect the plant siting, become a barrier to financing new projects, restrain deployment, and negatively impact the growth of the economy. This talk presents efforts of quantifying the relationship between energy production and water quality and quantity with spatial resolution across production life cycle, with a focus on bioenergy and food production. Further assessment identifies region-specific production scenarios that enable water-use efficiency to be increased while meeting federal regulations on water quality. We will introduce an open-access web-based model – WATER (Water Assessment Tool for Energy Resources) – ties hydrologic cycle to supply chain water footprint at county level for the United States. Based on water footprint a water availability index (WAI) was developed to assess freshwater available for production of food, biofuel and other uses at regional level.

The second portion of this talk presents recent development on water quality assessment for the tributaries of Mississippi River Basin, with a focus on nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and sediments that output to the Gulf of Mexico from Mississippi River. Geospatial and temporal analysis identifies water quality hotspots in large river basin and selects mitigation strategies, including land management and conservation practices. A value proposition of reducing nutrient by using biomass has been developed for LMRB. These exercises allow the analysis of the interplay of policy, feedstock, production pathway, non-point source nutrient discharge, and location factors, which can provide insights to the trade-offs among environmental, economic, and social impacts for informed decision making.

 

Biography

Dr. May Wu is a principal environmental system analyst at Argonne National Laboratory and Principal Investigator of a multi-year water analysis project supported by DOE BETO. Her research focuses on fresh and alternative water resource availability, water footprint, water quality, and wastewater management.  Dr. Wu is the principal author of an online model WATER (Water Analysis Tool for Energy Resources), which develops spatially explicit water footprint of biofuel produced from conventional, cellulosic, and algae feedstock and water availability of fresh renewable and alternative water resource under future bioenergy production scenarios, and includes water consumption accounting in the production of petroleum and electricity generation in the United States. Dr. Wu also leads an effort of developing watershed model using SWAT for Mississippi River Basin tributaries that examines the impact of climate, biomass land use, integrated land management, and conservation practices on regional water quality and its value proposition. The water modeling and analysis contributed to water sustainability assessment of the DOE’s Billion Ton study. May's latest work focuses on biorefinery wastewater management for water reuse and recycle. May served as Chair of Future Risk Technical Committee at AWRA, expert advisor to the Water Working Group of the Council on Sustainable Biomass Production, and grant review panels for US and international agencies. Currently, Dr. Wu serves in Scientific Leadership Committee at Current Research, Modeling Working Group in Hypoxia Task Force, and GBEP AG6 Bioenergy and Water Working Group, and is a Fellow of NAISE. May has a diverse background that also encompasses engineering and microbiology in the areas of biofouling control in cooling system, wastewater treatment, online monitoring, microbial-induced corrosion, fermentation, and membrane separation. Dr. Wu holds several U.S. patents, 60+ publications, and a dual Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering and Environmental Toxicology from Michigan State University.

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