Hanna Breunig began in my group as a Postdoctoral Fellow, and this fall she was promoted to Senior Scientific Engineering Associate. She is clearly one of the Energy Technology Area’s rising stars and we are all excited to see her flourish in her new role. Congrats, Hanna!

Our new paper (Breunig et al. 2017), published in Environmental Science & Technology, focuses on the electricity generation potential from utilizing food waste in California. Our findings reveal that a substantial fraction of food waste can be co-digested at existing wastewater treatment facilities. We also show that the availability of high-moisture residues varies dramatically month-to-month, and because multi-month storage of high-moisture solids is potentially challenging, seasonality is a key factor for determining bioenergy generation potential. It is available as a “Just Accepted” manuscript as of yesterday and can be found here. This work was funded by the California Energy Commission (CEC) Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC).

Arpad Horvath, Mike Taptich, and I just wrapped up our project on drop-in biofuel production for the California Air Resources Board. Arpad and I visited Sacramento to present our findings just before the holidays. Links to the slides, final report, and abstract can be found here. The video interview can be viewed below: