Journal article
Recovering Nitrogen as a Solid without Chemical Dosing: Bio-Electroconcentration for Recovery of Nutrients from Urine
P Ledezma, J Jermakka, J Keller, S Freguia
Environmental Science and Technology Letters | AMER CHEMICAL SOC | Published : 2017
Abstract
This letter presents the proof of concept of a novel bio-electroconcentration system (BEC), a hybrid microbial electrolysis/electrodialysis cell specifically designed to recover nitrogen (as ammonia NH4-N), phosphorus (as phosphate PO4-P), and potassium (as K+) from urine. Using a synthetic urine medium, the BECs could reach high current densities of up to 37.6 A m-2 at Ewe values of 0.0 versus the standard hydrogen electrode (SHE) and 50 A m-2 at 0.2 V versus SHE, which in turn drove the removal and recovery of N, P, and K at rates of 7.18 kg of NH4-N m-3 day-1, 0.52 kg of PO4-P m-3 day-1, and 1.62 kg of K+ m-3 day-1 into a concentrate stream (containing 1.87 M NH4-N, 0.29 M PO4-P, and 0.18..
View full abstractGrants
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was funded by Australian Research Council Project LP 150100402 in partnership with Queensland Urban Utilities (QUU) and ABR Process Development. The authors thank Profs. J. Leina, K. Rabaey, W. Verstraete, and B. Logan for fruitful discussions about this work and Dr. B. C. Donose for help with spectroscopic analyses. This work was performed in part at the Queensland node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility, a company established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy to provide nano and microfabrication facilities for Australia's researchers. Finally, the authors acknowledge the support of C. Chapman and M. Mulliss from QUU, A. Blunn and C. Ross from ABR, and D. Anderson of the GWA group (Caroma) toward the piloting of the BEC technology in 2017.