Conventional nitrogen removal methods from wastewater streams are mostly focused on nutrient “removal” from water, but not “recovery”. Nitrogen in wastewater is mainly removed through energy-intensive approaches such as biologically mediated nitrification/denitrification, which converts nitrogen compounds into nitrogen gas. However, high quality liquid fertilizers can be produced by the recovery and concentration of ammonia in wastewater, providing a valuable product and simultaneously avoiding resource loss through nitrification/denitrification and nitrogen release to receiving water bodies.<br/>A membrane concentration step may maximize down-stream recovery of nutrients and facilitate process optimization of nutrient component separation. Pressure-driven membrane filtration is widely investigated in wastewater treatment and resource recovery. NF and RO have been shown to have a great potential for nutrient recovery from wastewater. Here, we focus on the concentration of ammonia in the retentate/reject stream of NF/RO and separation from wastewater streams. Fine pore sizes of NF/RO membranes can effectively retain dissolved ions by being a physical/electrostatic barrier.<br/>This talk will discuss our investigation into the feasibility of the membrane concentration for ammonia recovery from poultry wastewater sources. The wastewater source that was studied was from an industrial poultry processing plant, which was high in ammonia and carbon but low in phosphate and salinity. As part of the study, we performed an in-depth investigation of real wastewater composition and operational conditions. We also investigated the organic composition of wastewater to gain more insight into the structure of the small organic molecules present in the wastewater and understand the fouling species and their interaction with the membrane surface. In this talk, results on the influence of organic carbon content, pH, and acid type on membrane fouling and flux performance will be presented.

Membrane nutrient recovery from poultry wastewater

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ACS Fall 2022

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