Research
D. Raj
Raman, Ph.D., P.E.
Associate Professor
E-mail: draman@utk.edu
Research Interests:
We live in an age of expanding global population and increasingly concentrated food production systems. To reduce the potential for serious environmental disruptions, efficient, reliable, and low-cost methods for treating agricultural and food-processing wastes are needed.
My research has focused primarily on two types of waste bioprocessing systems: high-rate anaerobic digesters (such as fixed-film digesters, and upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactors), and constructed wetlands, both of which are part of the solution to the problems outlined above. In addition to an interest in the biology and dynamics of these systems, I am interested in methods of assessing the cost of various treatment technologies, to better understand limitations to the deployment of these technologies in agricultural settings.
A new research thrust of mine is the development of
sensing systems to remotely locate insect infestations in cropping systems. Such
systems could be used to enhance IPM (integrated pest management) practices by
increasing the spatial and temporal resolution of insect census data.
Collaborators on this work include Reid Gerhardt, John
Wilkerson, Cyrus Smith, and Jerome Hogsette.
Ongoing Research Projects:
