New Wastewater Treatment Research Facility Exemplifies “Living Laboratory”

The university broke ground on construction of the innovative new William and Cloy Codiga Resource Recovery Center (CR2C). This facility, which will be managed primarily by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, will use actual campus wastewater diverted from the sewer system to test new treatment technologies. Its primary function will be to prove the effectiveness of these technologies sufficiently to stimulate their commercial development at a scale large enough to convincingly demonstrate their suitability for widespread implementation. The need for such innovation is increasing as demand for water exceeds existing supplies (particularly during droughts) and alternative water sources are needed. The facility will also research opportunities for energy recovery from the by-products of the treatment processes, which could provide the necessary energy to run them.

CR2C is a collaborative effort of water resource specialists and faculty researchers from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and the Stanford-led Engineering Research Center for Re-inventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt), along with the managers of Stanford’s water systems. It showcases the unique opportunities for researchers to test methods and innovations in the real-world living-laboratory setting of Stanford’s campus and infrastructure.