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William Abraham Tarpeh

William Abraham Tarpeh

Affiliated Faculty
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, by courtesy, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Center Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment
School: 
Engineering
Research Areas: 
Infrastructure policy & planning
Technology development
Urban service delivery
Water quality & treatment
Water resources management
Reimagining liquid waste streams as resources can lead to recovery of valuable products and more efficient, less costly approaches to reducing harmful discharges to the environment. Pollutants in effluent streams can be captured and used as valuable inputs to other processes. For example, municipal wastewater contains resources like energy, water, nutrients, and metals. The Tarpeh Lab develops and evaluates novel approaches to resource recovery from “waste” waters at several synergistic scales: molecular mechanisms of chemical transport and transformation; novel unit processes that increase resource efficiency; and systems-level assessments that identify optimization opportunities. We employ understanding of electrochemistry, separations, thermodynamics, kinetics, and reactor design to preferentially recover resources from waste. We leverage these molecular-scale insights to increase the sustainability of engineered processes in terms of energy, environmental impact, and cost.