A recently developed catalyst that can pull ammonia and solid ammonia from low levels of nitrates found in industrial wastewater and polluted groundwater promises to enable a process to yield drinkable water from those sources. Christopher Muhich, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of chemical engineering, helped researchers from Rice University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory create the catalyst. The process it enables would help reduce carbon dioxide emissions from traditional industrial production of ammonia. Using further treatment of this kind on other water contaminants could potentially clean up industrial wastewater enough to make it safe for drinking. See the earlier post below, “Process aims to strip ammonia from wastewater,” dated May 3, for more coverage of this research news.