Pollution solution presented at Waterways Conference

14 November

Lincoln University PhD student Parsa Mohajeri is battling a key issue in protecting New Zealand’s freshwater.

He is looking to find ways to eliminate the nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater that could end up in our rivers and lakes.

He will be presenting his findings at the upcoming Waterways Postgraduate Student Conference on Tuesday, 19 November at Lincoln.

The conference is an annual event run by the Waterways Centre for Freshwater Management, formed from the collaboration between Lincoln University and the University of Canterbury to coordinate research and teaching in a changing field.

Parsa will present on ‘N and P removal from wastewater: a novel approach using sequencing batch reactor technology’.

He said the batch reactor, a fill-and- activated sludge system for wastewater treatment, was one of the most popular methods of treatment used for treating wastewaters containing high concentration agricultural nutrients.

He used soil and bio-waste, amongst other materials to create a “novel media” to facilitate the capture of the nitrates and phosphorous and is achieving almost total removal.

A PhD student within the soil and environmental sciences department at Lincoln University, he received his BSc and MSc degree in civil and environmental engineering.

The Conference allows students from the University of Canterbury and Lincoln University to showcase their work into water management issues, such as ‘Mapping groundwater discharge into a large coastal lagoon in New Zealand’ and ‘Modelling the impacts of groundwater levels and abstraction on flows in the Waimakariri/ Selwyn River’.

You can find out more about the conference here http://www.waterways.ac.nz/conferences_workshops/pgstudentconf.shtml

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