Life Cycle Assessment and Techno-Economic Analysis of Utilizing Waste Nitrogen to Develop Microbial Protein from Cyanophycin Accumulating Organisms.

ABSTRACT: To advance a nitrogen circular economy, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) must use technologies that recover waste nitrogen and transform it into valuable products. One emerging option is partition-release-recover (PRR) technology. It transforms waste nitrogen into cyanophycin-accumulating organism microbial protein (CAO MP), which can be used as a protein source in animal feed. In this study, we perform a life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis of a prospective WWTP configuration that incorporates this technology and assess whether it merits further development. Conventional activated sludge and anaerobic/anoxic/oxic WWTP systems are comparator baseline systems. We compare CAO MP to five different protein sources (soybean meal, alfalfa feed, fishmeal, cottonseed feed, and dri

SUBMITTER: Lavallais CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12706789 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature