Fall 2022 – Creating a Circular Economy between Indoor Vertical Farming and Food Waste  

Project Directors: Yujin Park and Zhihao Chen

The team investigated the effect of crude food waste fertilizer ozone treatment duration on observed nitrate (NO3) concentration and found that NO3 concentration increased linearly as shown in the figure for typical conditions. This critical result indicates that ozone treatment will indeed make such treated food waste fertilizer substantially more efficient for plant nitrogen uptake than untreated food waste, confirming the original foundational hypothesis for the project.

line graph of ozone treatment duration