A large-scale study was released today in Nature Water, led by Zondlo group alumni Dr. Dan Moore with Zondlo group members and alumni Nathan Li, Dr. Hongming Yi, Dr. Lei Tao, James McSpiritt, Vladislav Sevostianov, Lars Wendt, and Professor Mark Zondlo. After an intensive field campaign in which 96 US water treatment plants were sampled with the Princeton Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment at diurnal and seasonal scales, the authors found wastewater treatment emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) were 1.9 times and 2.4 times higher, respectively, than the EPA's emission inventories for the waterwater treatment sector. N2O and CH4 are critical greenhouse gases, and are shown here to contribute to 2.5% and 8.1% of CH4 and N2O emissions in the U.S. The authors also highlighted that their findings show ammonia from wastewater treatment facilities may be an underrepresented urban source of the air pollutant precursor. Congratulations to Dr. Moore and all the co-authors for the many hours of planning, driving, sampling, and analysis that went into this important work. 

You can read more about the work on Princeton Engineering's webpage, and the article can be found at Nature Water.