Zachary Luscher, University of Utah
Waste water contains high amounts of organic material rich in minerals phosphate, ammonium, and magnesium; minerals critical to agricultural, household and industrial product sustainability, but also precursors to struvite formation. Struvite scaling can pose a tremendous amount of operational challenges for wastewater treatment plants. It is known fluoropolymers are inherently effective at mitigating struvite scaling on wastewater pipes. This project seeks to identify the properties of fluoropolymer composites and their ability to mitigate struvite formation from wastewater. This includes investigating the potential of chemical precipitation and biofilm formation on the pipe material. This research proposal aims to characterize the bio-films that form as well as the subsequent struvite scale formed as a function of several experimental conditions.