**AWARDS ISSUED PRIOR TO JANUARY 20, 2025, WERE FUNDED UNDER PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATIONS AND MAY NOT REFLECT THE PRIORITIES AND POLICIES OF THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION.** THIS PROJECTIS PROFORMEDBY FLORIDA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (FIT), OHIO UNIVERSITY (OHIO), AND UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO (UB). THE OVERARCHING GOAL IS TO DEVELOP BIOMASS-DERIVED BIOSORBENTS CAPABLE CONTROLLING AND PREVENTING EUTROPHICATION. THE GOAL WILL BE ACCOMPLISHED VIA A COMBINATION OF SYSTEMATIC EXPERIMENTS AT BATCH-SCALE TO CONTINUOUS COLUMN-SCALE, MACHINE LEARNING METHODS AND MOLECULAR SIMULATIONS.IN THIS PROJECT, BIOSORBENTS WILL BE SYNTHESIZED BY HYDROTHERMAL CARBONIZATION (HTC) AND THERMAL ACTIVATION OF MODEL COMPOUND (CELLULOSE) AND REAL BIOMASS (CORN STOVER). HTC CONDITIONS WILL BE VARIED TO MAXIMIZE THE CONCENTRATION OF FUNCTIONAL GROUPS ON BIOSORBENTS, AND THERMAL ACTIVATION WILL BE PERFORMED TO INCREASE THE OVERALL SURFACE AREA. ADSORPTION ISOTHERMS OF NUTRIENTS AND MICROCYSTIN WILL BE GENERATED FROM BATCH EXPERIMENTS, WHICH WILL BE MODELED USING MACHINE LEARNING METHODS TO ENABLE PREDICTION OF KINETICS OF BIOMASSES OF DIFFERENT COMPOSITIONS AND AT DIFFERENT HTC CONDITIONS.MOLECULAR SIMULATIONS WILL BE PERFORMED TO STUDY THE ADSORPTION OF NUTRIENTS AND MICROCYSTIN. MODEL BIOFILMS WILL BE FORMED AND CHARACTERIZED AND THEIR EFFECT ON ADSORPTION WILL BE STUDIED USING CONTINUOUS FLOW THROUGH EXPERIMENTS AND MECHANISTIC MODELING. ADDITIONALLY, WORK-LIFE OF THE BIOSORBENT WILL BE EVALUATED BY APPLYING THERMAL REGENERATION. FINALLY, A TECHNOECONOMIC ASSESSMENT (TEA) WILL BE PERFORMED TO DETERMINE THE ECONOMIC VIABILITY OF THE PROJECT.BY THE END OF THIS PROJECT, WE WILL HAVE BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF (A) HOW TO SYNTHESIZE BIOSORBENTS FOR NUTRIENT AND MICROCYSTIN ADSORPTION, (B) THE MECHANISMS UNDERLYING MICROCYSTIN BIOSORPTION, (C) THE EFFECTS OF NATURALLY OCCURRING BIOFILMS ON ADSORPTION BEHAVIOR IN A CONTINUOUS OPERATION, AND (D) THE PROCESS ECONOMICS INVOLVED IN BIOSORBENTS SYNTHESIS. BY DEVELOPING BIOSORBENTS FROM BIOMASS AND UTILIZING THEM TO PREVENT AND CONTROL EUTROPHICATION, THIS PROJECT ALIGNS WELL WITH THE SCOPE OF PROGRAM AREA A1531: BIOPROCESSING AND BIOENGINEERING.