Woodchip bioreactors undergo testing for removing pollution from point sources

Photo courtesy of the Illinois Drainage Research and Outreach Program

Watch University of Illinois Water Quality Associate Professor Laura Christianson describe denitrifying bioreactors and how the nonpoint natural water remediation technique has potential outside of agriculture.

How bioreactors enlist microbes to remove nitrate from water

Laura Christianson, associate professor of water quality at the University of Illinois, describes how woodchip bioreactors function in the Midwest – cleaning up effluent from non-point sources in agriculture with the help of woodchips and microbes.

Why wastewater treatment facilities are testing denitrifying woodchip bioreactors

While bioreactors at this point are mostly deployed in the agriculture setting, to clean water coming off fields, the green remediation technique holds potential for point sources like municipal wastewater treatment facilities too. Laura Christianson, an associate professor of water quality at the University of Illinois, describes where the research stands on this subject.

Austin Keating is the editor of Remediation Technology, a BNP Media publication launched in Sept. 2022. Austin is from Mattoon, IL, and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in journalism. Following graduation in 2016, he worked as a science writer and videographer for the university’s supercomputing center. In 2018, Austin obtained a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where he was the campus correspondent for Planet Forward and a Comer scholar. He then served as an award-winning field editor for America's oldest continuously published magazine, Prairie Farmer, before joining BNP in 2021, becoming editor of SNIPS Magazine and the now discontinued Point of Beginning Magazine.