Methane from wastewater treatment

Wastewater treatment is essential for public and environmental health, but contributes to climate change through methane and nitrous oxide produced through biological treatment processes. In this talk, I will present an overview of common sources of methane from wastewater treatment facilities and recent work modeling nationwide emissions from the 15,876 wastewater treatment plants across the United States. Our analysis considers onsite emissions of methane, nitrous oxide, and fossil-origin carbon dioxide, as well as upstream electricity-associated emissions and those from disposal of treated biosolids. We estimate that methane accounts for 45% of the climate impact of the wastewater treatment sector, making it the single largest contributor. A key limitation of this work is the lack of high-quality, representative measurement data, and I will discuss the relevance of novel methane measurement technologies for the wastewater sector.

Sahar El Abbadi (she/her) is an environmental engineer focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from water and energy systems through a combination of modeling and experimental approaches. As a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, her current work focuses on modeling lifecycle emissions from water and wastewater treatment systems. Prior to joining Berkeley Lab, Sahar completed her PhD at Stanford University, evaluating the opportunity to transform stranded methane into high-value products via methanotrophic bacteria. As a postdoc at Stanford, Sahar also led the Fall 2022 controlled release field campaign to test 22 different methane sensing platforms, including satellites, aircraft, ground sensors, and a drone.