Simultaneous recovery of phosphorus and nitrogen from inorganic fertilizer wastewater

Dinh Huu Phu; Le Tuyet Ngoc; Le Nguyen Quang Tu; Do Thi Minh Hieu; Nguyen Quang Long; Minh-Vien Le

doi:10.6180/jase.202208_25(4).0013

Simultaneous recovery of phosphorus and nitrogen from inorganic fertilizer wastewater

Environmental Engineering Water Resources Engineering

Dinh Huu Phu¹, Le Tuyet Ngoc¹, Le Nguyen Quang Tu¹, Do Thi Minh Hieu^1,2, Nguyen Quang Long This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.^1,2, and Minh-Vien Le This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.^1,2

¹Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT), 268 Ly Thuong Kiet – Dist.10 - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
²Vietnam National University, Linh Trung – Thu Duc – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Received: March 8, 2021
Accepted: June 25, 2021
Publication Date: November 24, 2021

Copyright The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cited.

Download Citation: ||https://doi.org/10.6180/jase.202208_25(4).0013

ABSTRACT

Conventional method for removal of N and P from industrial wastewater by biological treatment requires a long hydraulic- retention- time (HRT) and strict conditions for protecting the microorganisms. This study focuses on N and P recovery by struvite (MgNH4PO4 .6H2O) precipitation method which is a fast chemical process. In order to control the specs of the sample, a simulated wastewater solution was prepared according to the parameters of inorganic fertilizer wastewater. The influence of pH (7-9), Mg/P molar ratio (1-1.6) and N/P molar ratio (1.2-2) in struvite recovery efficiency was evaluated and the obtained struvite samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron micrograph (SEM). Response surface methodology (RSM) was utilized in Box-Behnken experimental design and data analysis to obtain a mathematic for P and N recovery. The XRD and SEM results confirmed the formation of struvite structure with the particle size about 7-50 micrometers. The obtained struvite contained nutrients N, P2O5 and MgO which can be used directly in fertilizer formulation. The mathematic models for P recovery and N recovery were obtained from analyzing experimental data with p-value <0.05. Basing on the proposed parameters (pH=9, Mg/P=1.4 and N/P=1.2) obtained from the mathematic model, 98% of phosphorous from an actual fertilizer wastewater sample (pH=8.3, N/P=1.2, P=2.98 g L−1 ) can be recovered. The obtained mathematic model and the suggested technical conditions can be applied for simultaneous recovery ammonium and phosphate from practical wastewater with high concentrations such as in fertilizer industry.

Keywords: fertilizer industry, nitrogen recovery, phosphorous recovery, process optimization, struvite

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