Nutrient recovery is an increasingly important emphasis in wastewater treatment in response to megatrends including population increases and resource depletion. In particular, phosphorus is a nonrenewable resource that is necessary for large-scale crop production. In addition to phosphorus, nitrogen is a necessary fertilizer ingredient.

 

Unlike phosphorus, nitrogen is renewable as it is captured from the atmosphere; however, this process is energy intensive, which provides great incentive to recover these two nutrients from wastewater. Various adsorbents including ion exchangers and sustainable biochar (which can be produced onsite at wastewater treatment facilities by pyrolyzing biosolids) are of great interest for nutrient recovery applications.

 

The focus on this project is comparatively evaluating the nutrient recovery potential of multiple nitrogen and phosphorus sorbents, including ion exchangers and biosolids-derived biochar.

 

This work is funded by a grant (PI-Mayer, Co-PI McNamara) from Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.

 

It is being performed in collaboration with Patrick McNamara (Marquette University, Environmental Engineering).

 

Students involved on this project include Anna Avila.

 

RELATED GROUP PUBLICATIONS:

Carey, D.E., Yang, Y., McNamara, P.J., Mayer, B.K. 2016. Recovery of agricultural nutrients from biorefineries. Bioresource Tech. In Press.

 

Williams, A.T., Zitomer, D.H., Mayer, B.K. 2015. Ion exchange-precipitation for nutrient recovery from dilute wastewaters. Env. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. 1:832-838.

 

Mayer, B.K., Gerrity, D., Rittmann, B.E., Reisinger, D., Brandt-Williams, S. 2013. Innovative strategies to achieve low total phosphorus concentrations in high water flows. Crit. Rev. Environ. Sci. Tech. 43:4:409-441.

 

Rittmann, B.E., Mayer, B.K., Westerhoff, P., Edwards, M. 2011. Capturing the lost phosphorus. Chemosphere. 84:846-853.

 

 

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