Society is facing a series of convergent environmental tragedies, like the collapse in biodiversity, human-caused climate change, the rapid accumulation of waste plastics in waterways and oceans, and more. These challenges will require a diversity of interdisciplinary technologies to be developed and deployed at exceptionally fast rates to market. We have a history of these types of accomplishments, and we can do it again.

In this presentation, I will summarize my recent efforts to create new plastic recycling technologies, since the only free-market approach to combat the plastics problem is to make recycling technologies profitable. The term ‘upcycling’ has gained recent media attention as an attractive means to manage plastic waste, with one key problem: Few technologies exist capable of producing ‘high-value’ products from plastic waste. I will present two plastic recycling approaches. The first combines chemistry and biology capable of depolymerizing mixed plastic waste, like polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE), and polystyrene (PS), and funneling these compounds into a single product, like a biopolymer or a precursor for nylon product, using an engineered microbe. The second approach uses tandem synergistic chemistry — alkane dehydrogenation and olefin metathesis — to depolymerize polyolefin polymers at temperatures below 200 °C using abundant alkane co-reactants and robust heterogeneous catalysts.

One of the biggest sources of uncertainty in projecting sea level rise is accurately predicting tidewater glacier melt rates. Despite observing glaciers retreating, very few observations of glacier melt rates exist. Observations of tidewater glacier melt made previously using remote sensing suggested that the leading predictive models are underestimating melt by a factor of 10 to 100. This means we still don’t have a great idea of what controls glacier melt rates. Why? Because it is hugely challenging to make underwater measurements of processes that control melt at the face of an actively calving tidewater glacier terminus.

Yet, our collaborative and innovative team have ideas about why glaciers may be melting faster than the prevalent models predict. This includes interesting physics of buoyant melt plume convection, rough ice surfaces, and bubbles popping out of the ice (that not only make sound, but also cause the ice to melt faster). We are making extremely important, and at times scary (no humans in harm’s way) measurements of ice melt and of the processes that control melt at the terminus of Xeitl Sít’ (also known as LeConte Glacier) in Southeast Alaska. Never-before-made measurements are collected from robotic platforms that can travel right to the ice-ocean interface.

Join me to hear about glacier retreat, the processes we think may be important for melt at the ice-ocean interface, the way we are making insightful new measurements, and what we have learned so far to deduce the source of the missing melt.

Headwater streams are essential habitat and provide clean water to downstream users. Their federal protection depends upon their connectivity to downstream waters, which is changing in response to climate and weather patterns. In this talk, I review both the science and policy that govern headwater stream protections. In particular, I highlight a 70+ year study at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest (near Blue River, Oregon in the Cascade Range) to document the changing flows, connectivity, and protections that could be anticipated in the coming decades.

Klamath Dam Removal
Join us to hear from Mark Bransom, Chief Executive Officer of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, about the cooperative effort to re-establish the natural vitality of the Klamath River so that it can support all communities in the Klamath basin. Mark will detail the journey KRRC has been on to decommission four dams along the Klamath River to restore river health, provide favorable economic, environmental, and societal impacts, and address stakeholder concerns.

A 1997 graduate of Oregon State University with a doctoral degree in civil and environmental engineering, Mark has over 25 years of planning, engineering, and construction experience in water resources and environmental management for state and local governments, federal agencies, Tribal Nations, NGOs, and private sector clients throughout the United States.

When thinking about water quality, many people probably think about individual pesticides or antibiotics that they heard about in the news. The truth is, there are hundreds, likely millions, of chemicals present in most surface water samples. These chemicals might seem like a random assortment of molecules, but they are a chemical record, or a receipt, of all the biological, chemical, and physical processes that are occurring within a system. When people disturb the land, it leaves a chemical signature in the water. When salmon spawn in the rivers, it leaves a chemical signature in the water. Whether processes occur on land or in the water, our surface waters are libraries of chemical information. If we can decode the chemical signatures in a water sample, we can theoretically collect data on anything and everything that occurs upstream. The challenge is decoding the chemical signatures present. This work has implications for understanding human and ecosystem health and provides a glimpse into how nature will respond to climate change.

The presentation will discuss Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) as a crucial tool for managing water resources in the face of climate change. It highlights drywells as a promising solution to overcome challenges associated with traditional MAR techniques. Drywells offer efficient groundwater recharge over a large area, bypassing surface obstacles and minimizing water loss. They present a cost-effective and sustainable approach to address water scarcity and enhance water resilience in diverse environments.

With increasing water shortages, many agricultural producers are looking to reclaimed water for irrigation.

This lecture discusses a study that explores the feasibility of a new process called electrodialysis-forward osmosis. The goal of the research was to recover nutrients and clean water from anaerobic digester effluent and to safely use it to help grow food crops, specifically lettuce and kale, through hydroponic production.

Impressively, the treatment achieved high nutrient recovery rates and reclaimed up to 74% of clean water. Additionally, the hybrid ED-FO process captured 76-98% of heavy metals and 83% of total organic carbon in the residual waste stream.

Both ED and FO demonstrated low-fouling potential. The economic analysis indicated that the hybrid ED-FO process is promising for scalable implementation, making it highly attractive in terms of resource recovery, waste footprint reduction, and water quality enhancement.

Lithium extraction is a vital piece in the shift toward global electrification. Yet traditional methods are slow, resource-heavy, and yield low results. Our innovative approach uses an advanced evaporation process to concentrate lithium ions from high-salinity brines efficiently, reducing lithium loss and preventing fouling. We've made significant enhancements to industrial brine concentration methods, incorporating cutting-edge technology in multiphase flow and transport phenomena.

A key element is our machine learning-based system design and control. It uses an artificial intelligence “digital twin” in the humidification-dehumidification (HDH) cycle, which captures data patterns and understands the system's sensitivity to various parameters. This model optimizes throughput with minimal trial and error, making design parameter changes and maximizing performance cost-effectively.

Conservation practices often involve using nature-based solutions on watershed landscapes to solve complex water management problems. These problems can include things like determining how to share water, keeping water clean, dealing with floods and droughts, and adapting to the changing climate.

Practices such as wetlands, grassy areas next to streams, and riparian buffers are implemented on different areas of the landscape and can help make our water cleaner by reducing the transport of nutrients, pesticides, and pathogens from flowing into rivers and lakes downstream. These practices also simultaneously create homes for wildlife and can help lessen the impact of floods and droughts in an area.

But planning for these conservation practices isn't simple. There are many unknowns to consider, like the natural environment, nearby buildings and roads, and how people behave. When engineers or technologists work on solutions for conservation, they need to make sure stakeholders understand the uncertainties involved.

However, many people who are affected by these conservation decisions might not fully understand or might ignore the information about uncertainties. Therefore, it's important to show these uncertainties in a way that's easy for everyone to understand. This helps make sure that decisions about conservation are made in timely and effective ways.

This presentation provides insight into how creating visualizations of the uncertainties around these efforts can impact how people in watershed communities make decisions regarding actions aimed at reducing flooding.

2023 Oregon State Engineering Faculty Lecture and Q&A: "Resilience and Sustainability in Power Systems and  Power Electronics"