The Future of Wastewater Sensing workshop is part of a collaboration between Arizona State University Center for Nanotechnology in Society in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Environmental Security, LC Nano, and the Nano-enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Systems NSF Engineering Research Center. The Future of Wastewater Sensing workshop explores how technologies for studying, monitoring, and mining wastewater and sewage sludge might develop in the future, and what consequences may ensue for public health, law enforcement, private industry, regulations and society at large. The workshop pays particular attention to how wastewater sensing (and accompanying research, technologies, and applications) can be innovated, regulated, and used to maximize societal benefit and minimize the risk of adverse outcomes, when addressing critical social and environmental challenges.

The objective of this work is to perform LCAs three wastewater treatement alternatives at battalion-sized (500 soldier) FOBs. Three systems will be explored: traditional wastewater treatment of combined blackwater and graywater streams using activated sludge and anaerobic digestion (the status quo); MXC treatment of blackwater to produce H2O2 for disinfection of blackwater and graywater; a hybrid system of blackwater treatments with MXCs to produce electricity with graywater disinfection using H2O2 produced offsite. Environmental impacts are assessed using Impact 2002+ midpoint and endpoint categories, primarily reported for human health and environmental impacts. Uncertainity analysis is performed using two techniques. First, a pedigree matrix is developed to identify the highest areas of uncertainties in data. Second, a sensitivity analysis is used to explore the effects on endpoint categories from varying transportation distance, the percentage of wastewater that is reused as nonpotable water, and coagulant doses.