GIS Seminar: Intelligent Water Infrastructure

Abstract: High energy consumption and low-efficiency performance have been long-standing pivotal problems for wastewater treatment plants. These systems are operated like “Black Boxes” and monitored using “single point” probes without a complete picture of operational status and in situ waste quality. Energy positive resource recovery has been regarded as the future of wastewater treatment plants. In order to achieve this initiative, game changing actions should be undertaken to convert existing the “local and limited” monitoring and passive control pattern to panoramic high-resolution profiling and intelligent operational methodology. The research presented focuses on developing state-of-the-art sensing technology--flat thin solid-state mill-electrode array (MEA) sensors and solid-state ion selective membrane (S-ISM) nitrogen sensors for real-time in situ water quality monitoring. Specifically, MEA consists of multiple types of mm-sized sensors electrodes (e.g., dissolved oxygen, pH and conductivity) and enables profiling heterogeneity in systems at an unprecedented high spatiotemporal resolution. S-ISM nitrogen sensors effectively solve the essential problems of existing water sensors: low accuracy and short lifespan. Mass deployment of these low cost and durable sensors will obtain high-fidelity datasets, reveal the complete picture of system heterogeneity, detect and isolate faults within the systems, and ultimately alleviate system uncertainty.The seminar will have three parts. Part 1 will be S-ISM nitrogen sensor development and the progress from lab tests to field demonstration tests. Part 2 will be high-resolution profiling using the MEA sensors in a reactor and data-driven model development based on sensor data. Part 3 will be the vision of intelligent water infrastructure through next generation sensing and modeling methodologies. The innovative solutions ranging from mm-sized S-ISM sensors and MEAs with high accuracy and long-term stability (improved real-time in situ monitoring), high-fidelity profiling of system heterogeneity (improved process understanding), and data-driven rigorous modeling (improved process resilience and stability) presented in this seminar will have a great potential to transform energy-intensive, inefficient and unstable water infrastructures to accurately control energy-saving “intelligent dynamic robust systems”.Speaker: Dr. Baikun Li, Centennial Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Connecticut (UConn)Bio: Dr. Li has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal papers, and is the major adviser for 35 graduate students, including 14 Ph.D students. Dr. Li has served as the Associate Editor for Journal of Environmental Engineering (ASCE-JEE), CLEAN-Soil, Air, Water, and Journal of Air & Waste Management Association (JAWMA). Dr. Li’s research has been supported by National Science Foundation (NSF), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Defense (DoD), United State Geology Survey (USGS), Department of Education and industrial partners.Before joining UConn in 2006, Dr. Li was the Assistant Professor at Penn State Harrisburg for three years. Dr. Li’s research is in the multidisciplinary areas of biosensors and bioelectronics, high-profiling system monitoring and analysis, bioenergy and bioresource recovery from organic wastes, citizen science-based water infrastructure and tracing contaminant fate in natural environments. Dr. Li was the Al Geib Professorship recipient 2013-2016, and was awarded the Woman of Innovation (Research Innovation and Leadership) in 2010 by the Connecticut Technology Council (CTC). In 2017, due to her outstanding achievement of bioenergy harvest from wastewater and innovative sensing technology for real time wastewater monitoring, Dr. Li was inducted as the Member of Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE).Dr. Baikun Li received the B.Engr. degree and the M.Engr. degree from Harbin Institute of Technology, China in 1992 and 1995, respectively, and the Ph.D. from University of Cincinnati in 2002. She completed the post-doctorate training at the Pennsylvania State University in 2003.