Doug Call and Jessica Deaver approached the president’s chief science and technology adviser on Friday and told her it was time to learn about something gross.
Arati Prabhaker, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, was touring research facilities throughout the Triangle, including the Science and Technologies for Phosphorus Sustainability Center at North Carolina State University. There, Call and Deaver study wastewater.
“Amazing things are happening with wastewater,” Prabhaker said.
Call and Deaver went on to explain a process in which wastewater is effectively dried out, leaving behind a solid collection of phosphorus and nitrogen that can then be spread on fields, thus eliminating the need for farmers to purchase fertilizer containing freshly mined phosphorus.
The project is one of dozens taking place in the so-called STEPS Center, which has set goals of 25% reductions in mined phosphates and in phosphorus lost to soil and water within 25 years. In 2021, the center was funded with a five-year, $25 million National Science Foundation grant, support that can be renewed for an additional five years.
“It’s essential for providing all the food that we eat, but the way that we use phosphorus is unsustainable. We mine it from nonrenewable resources and only 20% of the phosphorus used in the food system actually ends up in our diet so 80% of it is lost,” said Jacob Jones, the center’s director and an N.C. State professor of materials science and engineering.
When it is lost, phosphorus builds up in soil and water, where it can degrade environmental quality by helping algal blooms develop.
North Carolina is home to Nutrien’s phosphate mine in Aurora, a 12,000-acre site that digs ore up from about 120 feet below the surface. The facility is sometimes touted as the world’s largest integrated phosphorus mine and plant site.
The state’s animal agriculture also offers a significant phosphorus contribution. A 2001 U.S. Department of Agriculture study found that in 1997, 30 North Carolina counties generated more phosphorus from manure than their soil could contain.
The STEPS effort includes seven other schools, as well as RTI International. Partner schools include Appalachian State University, Arizona State University, Marquette University, North Carolina A&T State University, the University of Florida, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
The center has about 40 principal investigators, as well as 40 graduate students and post-doctoral students. They are working on 26 uniquely identified projects, but Jones and other leaders are also keenly focused on how those advancements can work together to address the problem.
“There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to phosphorus sustainability, but by understanding it as a system at the largest level that we can understand it, we can figure out the best ways to use our resources to make inroads on that big vision,” Jones said.
In addition to discussing wastewater treatment at the STEPS Center, Prabhakar heard about a method for 3D-printing plant cells that could allow scientists to better understand how the cells communicate with each other and what they need to grow.
Prabhakar also toured N.C. State’s Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Engineering Research Center, as well as its Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center.
Asked how the projects reflect the Biden administration’s approach to economic development, Prabhakar referred to a line in this week’s State of the Union address in which Biden said America is defined by possibilities. That’s reflected, Prabhakar said, in the labs and classrooms she toured at N.C. State.
“It’s exciting research just because we didn’t know these things before, and that’s dazzling and exciting,” Prabhakar said. “But to me, even more powerful is the fact that they start allowing us to go after our biggest aspirations.”
Throughout her tours Friday afternoon, Prabhakar asked students to explain how their work was different from what came before.
When she returns to Washington, Prabhakar and her staff will return to work implementing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. But Prabhakar also remains optimistic about future research funding.
“This is one of the things that we do agree on as a society, is this is an area where America still does big things together and they are things that we need for our future,” Prabhakar said.
This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund, in a N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.
