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Ammonia removal from low-strength municipal wastewater by powdered resin combined with simultaneous recovery as struvite

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Abstract

Low-strength municipal wastewater is considered to be a recoverable nutrient resource with economic and environmental benefits. Thus, various technologies for nutrient removal and recovery have been developed. In this paper, powdered ion exchange resin was employed for ammonia removal and recovery from imitated low-strength municipal wastewater. The effects of various working conditions (powdered resin dosage, initial concentration, and pH value) were studied in batch experiments to investigate the feasibility of the approach and to achieve performance optimization. The maximum adsorption capacity determined by the Langmuir model was 44.39 mg/g, which is comparable to traditional ion exchange resin. Further, the effects of co-existing cations (Ca2+,Mg2+,K+) were studied. Based on the above experiments, recovery of ammonia as struvite was successfully achieved by a proposed two-stage crystallization process coupled with a powdered resin ion exchange process. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffractometry (XRD) results revealed that struvite crystals were successfully gained in alkaline conditions (pH = 10). This research demonstrates that a powdered resin and two-stage crystallization process provide an innovative and promising means for highly efficient and easy recovery from low-strength municipal wastewater.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment of China (Nos. 2017ZX07102-003 and 2017ZX07103-003)

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally for this article.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Kuo Fang, Fei Peng, Hui Gong & Kaijun Wang

  2. School of Water Resources & Environment, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, 100083, China

    Fei Peng & Huanzhen Zhang

Authors
  1. Kuo Fang
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  2. Fei Peng
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  3. Hui Gong
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  4. Huanzhen Zhang
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  5. Kaijun Wang
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hui Gong or Kaijun Wang.

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Highlights

• Powdered resin was employed for ammonia recovery from municipal wastewater.

• Powdered resin achievedefficient ammonia removal under various working conditions.

• Co-existing cations indicated competitive adsorption of ammonia.

• Ammonia was recoveredby two-stage crystallization coupled with ion exchange.

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Fang, K., Peng, F., Gong, H. et al. Ammonia removal from low-strength municipal wastewater by powdered resin combined with simultaneous recovery as struvite. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng. 15, 8 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-020-1300-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-020-1300-7

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