How to separately collect Ammonia from wastewater?

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We are trying to separate the ammonium from wastewater (Chinese municipal  wastewater plant located in Beijing.), so that it can be utilized for other purpose. 

Is there any way to selectively separate and collect ammonium nitrogen from wastewater? 

Recovery could be above 90%, and the outlet concentration of ammonia nitrogen in this wastewater is below 1 ppm. Your suggestions would be appreciated. Cheers.


 

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18 Answers

  1. a holy & honest issue & their solution ,only i treat well . so arranged meeting for discuss the matter in my Home Town In MY Home through negotiation a healthy happy Atmosphere & final the plan by me.

  2. Check out Saltworks Technologies. It appears that they have something that does what you are looking for (i.e., separates the ammonia from the wastewater) http://www.saltworkstech.com/ammonia-splitter/

  4.  

    In a municipal wastewater treatment plant, up to 85 per cent of the phosphorus and 40 per cent of the ammonia load is removed from sludge dewatering liquid using this process and the resulting product is marketed as a commercial fertilizer called Crystal Green

    info@ostara.com

    Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc.
    690-1199 West Pender Street
    Vancouver, BC V6E 2R1

    Phone: 604.408.6697
    Fax: 604.408.4442

  6. Dear Ye Zhao

    There are Two Things Ammonia recovers & ammonia removing

    Ammonia recovers are most useful economical because the ammonia product is very useful  and costly and eco-friendly.

    1. Ammonia recovered from ammonical waste
    1. By Distillation Tower

    The ammonia can be recovered with distillation tower the tower height depends upon quantity of waste and percentage of ammonia.(as shown in the fig)

    1. Successful Ammonia Removal from Wastewater Using Liqui-Cel Membrane.
    2. The membrane bioreactor (MBR) treatment process consists of three main components: 1) anoxic basins, 2) pre-aeration basins, and 3) the MBR basins. Raw wastewater must be screened through a fine screen prior to the anoxic basin. From the anoxic basin, mixed liquor flows into the pre-aeration basins and then into the MBR basins. The membranes are located in the MBR basins where wastewater is passed through the membranes and permeate pumps deliver the effluent to the disinfection process prior to discharge. The membranes remove the need for secondary clarification required in other treatment processes.
    3. The solution is ECP (Electrolytic Catalytic Precipitation). From 1000 ppm to 0 ppm in few hours, without chemicals, without dilution, only with electric power. ECP is a process assigned to Aquatic Technologies.. Primary claims all refer to addition of catalytic enzymes, but the results cited do not show much improvement over straight anodic oxidations
    1. Ammonia Removing
    1. Remove ammonia from the wastewater via biological nitrification.
    2. Different from biological treatment, this process physically converts ammonia in wastewater to nitrogen and steam using the stripper and the catalytic converter
    3.  Anaerobically digest the excess biomass from biological nitrification to release ammonia into the water in the digester. Microorganisms can be used to convert ammonia to nitrate. A facility for doing this would likely be inexpensive to run, but would take up a lot of space
    4. When excess digested biomass is dewatered, retain the filtrate from the dewatering process.  It should contain > 1000 mg/L of ammonia.
    5.  You could take anaerobic with USAB follow Fixed Media as the reactor and put it or inoculated with nitrifying anaerobic to decompose ammonia to Hydrogen and Nitrogen gases.
    6. At elevated   pH with Line and NaOH in 9.5-10.5 the Ammonia will escapes from body water through the air or steam stripper or the reactor in scrubbed with sulphuric acid to produce Ammonium Sulphate as fertilizer.
    7. Ammonium Removal from Concentrated Waste Streams with the Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation (Anammox) Process in Different Reactor Configurations .
    8. The easiest way is to boil the solution until the ammonia has all gone up the exhaust stack. But some would certainly question the environmental wholesomeness of moving the problem from one media to another :-)
    9. Ammonia or Ammonium ion, in aqueous solution can be removed by passing effluent through cation exchange resin. Resin can be regenerated with acid to get ammonium salt..
    10. The zeolite pellets instead of the sand. Zeolite absorbs about 1000 times its own weight in ammonia.

    Regards,

    Prem Baboo

     

     

    1 Comment

    1. good information Prem Baboo thanks

  7. You could take anaerob with USAB follow Fixed Media as the reactor and put it or inoculated with nitrifying anaerob to decompose ammonia to Hydrogen and Nitrogen gases. As the 2nd optioned you can increase the pH with Line and NaOH in 9.5-10.5 the Ammonia will escapes from body water through the reactor in scrubbed with sulfuric acid to produce Ammonium Sulfate as fertilizer.

  8. We have recently developed an ammonia recovery process that is able toextract and concentrate ammonia from mg/L to g/L, making it a valuable resource. We are looking for commercial opportunities for the process. Please contact pvoigt@cleanteq.com with the water quality information and we will provide some basic informaton on the economics.

  9. Ammonia stripping for high volumes of wastewater could be done using US Pat. 7,757,866 which discloses a high shear crossflow filter in a radial counterflow reactor.  This is patented in China.  There is also US Pat. 5,688,377 now in the public domain. 

  10. Dear Ye Zhao,

     

    Eawag, a well known research institute in water issues in Switzerland has done and is still doing research on topic.

     

    As far as I know, there is no economic feasible solution to extract the ammonium directly of municipal wastewater (yet). Samewise, it is not possible to retrieve the nitrate once the biological process has been done easily (like stated by Sean below).

    However, research has been done to extract ammonium/nitrate from source-separated urine at a rather interesting cost. This is due to the fact that around 80% of ammonia in municipal wastewater is due to urine (approx. the same number for phosphate btw). The advantage is that concentration is higher, and therefore water evaporation becomes a viable option. However, urine has to undergo biological treatment, since in source-separated urine you will find ammonia instead of ammonium due to the high pH (which is a consequence of the hydrolisis of urea), and ammonia evaporates quite easily. The biological treatment allows the transformation of ammonia into nitrate and a reduction of pH. After evaporition, you will have a ammonium-nitrate salt, as well as some phosphate salts, which can be used as a fertilizer.

    If you are interested in this solution, please look for the project VUNA from EAWAG : http://www.eawag.ch/en/department/eng/project-overview/vuna/

  11. The short answer to your question, "can you SELECTIVELY remove ammonia as ammonium" is NO!  If you figure out a way to do it, then you will have the corner on a market that it boudless.  Even to get rid of the ammonia, you have to eithe precipitate it or oxidize it.  This is usually done via microbiology for oxidation.  Then you would have to denitrify to get your nitrogen gas, after your oxidative nitrification (formation of Nitrate and then Nitrite).  Good luck with this one!  I will be watching for you on the cover of Time, if you pull it off.  Best Regards, Sean L. Roop

  12. Aquatechfood.com took fish waste from 5ppm to 0 to 1ppm with a custom filtration system and the addition of the www.G7water,com catalyst. Waste is waste so this type of system should work for this question as well...

  13. I suggest the following steps:

    1. Remove ammonia from the wastewater via biological nitrification

    2. Anaerobically digest the excess biomass from biological nitrifiation to release ammonia into the water in the digester.

    3. When excess digested biomass is dewatered, retain the filtrate from the dewatering process.  It should contain > 1000 mg/L of ammonia.

    4. Recover the ammonia from the filtrate via distillation such as used by the company ThermoEnergy.  Their CASTion process recovers the ammonia as concentrated ammonium sulfate that can be used for fertilizer.

    Struvite precipitation is another alternative but only removes ammonia to the extent of phosphate present.  The above suggested approach could be used in conjunction with and following struvite preciptation.

     

  14. Please search Sacramento Municipal as they have very stringent rules related to removal so there technology adaption may have some commercial bearing on this question.

  15. Have you tried to precipitate it into struvite (magnesium-amonium-phosphate or calcium-amonium-phosphate)? You have to balance the three elements and slightly elevate the pH. I wrote my master thesis in Germany in this topic, you can free download it from my profile. If you can't feel free to contact me. Best regards from Brazil

  17. As mentioned at pH 10.5 ammonia will degas off water, it does take aeration and it can be expensive to raise pH that high in some instances. Some absorb ammonia into clinoptilolite (main ingredient in Kitty-Litter) and then this combination can be used as a fertilizer additive. Those are the two obvious options. 

  18. If you can raise the pH of the water, ammonia will be converted to the gas phasee.  Not sure how you would collect it.  Have you ever considered algae?  Algae can be used to reduce nutrient loading.  You can harvest the biomass, and pelletize and burn it, or anaerobically digest for biogas to power ythe plant.  The biomass could alos potentially be used to amend soil, depending on heavy metal content.  algaeindustrymagazine.com has a great deal of information on this.  There is also an Algae Biomass Organization that is a good resource, as is Oilgae.com