Energy services leader New Jersey Resources joins E-ffiliates to advance innovations at the energy-water nexus
The Andlinger Center has welcomed New Jersey Resources Corporation (“New Jersey Resources”), a premier energy infrastructure company, to the Princeton E-ffiliates Partnership (E-ffiliates) to unlock advances in pursuit of a circular carbon economy.
New Jersey Resources is a Fortune 1000 company that, along with its subsidiaries, provides energy services including transportation, distribution, asset management, and home services. The company is committed to providing its customers with affordable and reliable energy services while supporting the transition to a clean energy future.
One project already underway with the support of New Jersey Resources is a collaboration with Z. Jason Ren, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, to explore the nexus of energy and water resource recovery.
One aspect of the project involves investigating how treated effluent from water resource recovery facilities could be used for hydrogen electrolysis — a process in which hydrogen is split from water using electricity. Using recycled water sources for electrolysis, rather than fresh water from the public drinking supply, could help to ensure that the shift to renewable technologies does not exacerbate issues related to water stress. At the same time, hydrogen electrolysis also yields oxygen as a byproduct, which a wastewater plant operator could use to lower the energy needed for the treatment process.
“Treatment facilities provide a host of innovative opportunities when we think about utilizing waste streams for sustainable cleaner energy through both electrolysis and fuels,” said Chris Chen, business development manager for New Jersey Resources. “We see this e-filliation as an immense opportunity to pursue strategic projects within wastewater treatment plants that can provide a circular energy ecosystem, serving as a way to help advance the leading edge of economy-wide decarbonization efforts.”
The collaboration will also look beyond hydrogen production to explore additional ways energy and water resource recovery can work together. The research might explore the conversion of carbon dioxide from energy production into bicarbonate, which is used to control the pH levels for wastewater treatment processes. In the other direction, biogas produced by microbes or other thermochemical processes during wastewater treatment and in landfills could partially displace the use of fossil fuel-derived natural gas.
“There are many co-benefits of pairing waste management with renewable energy generation that we are exploring,” said Ren. “It offers a new perspective on the carbon waste we generate every day — to find value in processes that enable circularity, rather than disposing of what is no longer wanted.”
The proximity of New Jersey Resources’ facilities to Princeton will also provide a valuable platform for research that translates scientific discoveries into practical applications.
“The partnership with New Jersey Resources will be a valuable opportunity to conduct research and perform experiments on actual systems, moving our research — and our impact — out of the lab and into the real world,” said Chris Greig, associate director for external partnerships and the Theodora D. ’78 & William H. Walton III ’74 Senior Research Scientist at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.