Arkansas researcher to work with farmers on water recycling

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.— Challenges surrounding water usage also raise big questions that University of Arkansas, Fayetteville researcher Lauren Greenlee is working to answer.

“How do we sustain our way of life? How do we sustain the lifestyle that we’re all used to? How do we sustain being able to go to the grocery store and having this wide selection of products?” said Greenlee, an assistant professor of chemical engineering.

Greenlee has won a $4.3 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to work with farmers on ways to recycle water.

The grant award, announced last month, also involves evaluating whether water technology used in other industries might work for agricultural applications, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.

“This is a very different world than even 150 years ago, and it comes back to the availability and cleanliness and safety of water. And ag supports all of that,” said Greenlee, who joined the UA faculty in December 2015.

Last year, she won $2.4 million in National Science Foundation funding as the lead principal investigator for a project to study ways of taking nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater and converting the chemicals into commercial fertilizer.

Yet Greenlee said she does not have an agriculture background. Instead, she collaborates with agriculture experts while bringing to the table her research expertise on water systems.

“I have a personal passion to study water: water treatment, water contamination, water quality,” Greenlee said.

Agriculture usage makes up about 80 percent of water consumption in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.