Microbial electrolysis followed by chemical precipitation for effective nutrients recovery from digested sludge centrate in WWTPs

Barua, Sajib; Zakaria, Basem S.; Chung, Tae Hyun; Hai, Faisal I.; Haile, Tesfaalem; Al‐Mamun, Abdullah; Dhar, Bipro Ranjan

doi:10.1016/j.cej.2018.12.067

Cited by 79 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…In the future, Hillsborough County may wish to consider if it would be economically beneficial to remove or recover phosphorus from the BMF sidestream. Because the sidestream does not contain ammonium, it would not be feasible to use engineered struvite precipitation for phosphorus removal/recovery; however, other technologies have also been proposed for this purpose, for example, zirconium-based adsorbents (Ohura et al, 2011;Podstawczyk, Witek-Krowiak, Dawiec-Lisniewska, Chrobot, & Skrzypczak, 2017) or precipitation as calcium phosphate (Barua et al, 2019;Shaddel, Ucar, Andreassen, & Østerhus, 2019).…”

Section: Research Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

Mass fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorus through water reclamation facilities: Case study of biological nutrient removal, aerobic sludge digestion, and sidestream recycle

Kassouf

Parra

Mulford

et al. 2019

Water Environment Research

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At water reclamation facilities, recycling of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) from solids‐handling processes to the mainstream treatment process can have detrimental effects on biological nutrient removal systems. In this study, mass fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorus were quantified through the treatment trains at the Northwest Regional Water Reclamation Facility (NWRWRF) and the adjoining Biosolids Management Facility (BMF), which receives sludge from several water reclamation facilities in Hillsborough County, Florida. The driving objectives were to determine (a) whether the return stream from BMF to NWRWRF (i.e., the “sidestream”) represents a significant source of nitrogen and phosphorus to NWRWRF, and (b) whether the sidestream return from BMF is interfering with biological nutrient removal processes at NWRWRF. We determined that nearly half of the overall phosphorus flux into NWRWRF is recycled from the BMF sidestream. This leads to an increased cost of treatment, for example, for alum used in phosphorus removal at NWRWRF. In contrast to phosphorus, the flux of nitrogen from BMF to NWRWRF is small (~3%) compared with the flux of nitrogen entering NWRWRF in raw wastewater. However, nitrogen in the sidestream is mostly in the form of nitrate, which prevents anaerobic conditions from developing in the fermentation basin at NWRWRF, and thereby interferes with the enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) process. Some measurements suggest that fermentation and release of phosphorus may occur in the return activated sludge line (despite the relatively short residence time in that line), which supports EBPR and may partially compensate for anoxic (denitrifying) conditions in the fermentation basin. Therefore, overall, NWRWRF is able to meet its permit limits for phosphorus through a combination of EBPR and alum addition. Although the fluxes measured here are particular to the treatment systems under consideration, the general trends observed are likely to apply to many similar facilities that employ biological nutrient removal, aerobic digestion, and sidestream recycle, particularly those with regional biosolids management facilities. We recommend that such facilities consider (a) removal or recovery of phosphorus from their sidestreams and (b) returning sidestreams downstream of fermentation basins to avoid inhibition of EBPR processes. Practitioner points Sidestreams from aerobic digestion can represent significant sources of phosphorus to mainstream wastewater treatment. Recycle of nitrate in aerobic digestion sidestreams can interfere with enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) during mainstream treatment. Fermentation of return activated sludge (RAS) can support EBPR, even under short average hydraulic residence times (minutes).

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Section: Research Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

Mass fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorus through water reclamation facilities: Case study of biological nutrient removal, aerobic sludge digestion, and sidestream recycle

Kassouf

Parra

Mulford

et al. 2019

Water Environment Research

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“…Due to slow growth kinetics, the time required for complete enrichment of anode or cathode biofilms can be significant (e.g., months-years), ultimately prolonging the reactor start-up time (Zakaria and Dhar, 2019). Several studies have utilized the effluent from MET reactors as an inoculum source (Zakaria et al, 2018;Barua et al, 2019;Chung et al, 2020a), which can expedite the enrichment process of electroactive biofilms. However, an innovative approach for the rapid establishment of electroactive biofilms is still required.…”

Section: Bioelectrodementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Microbial electrochemical technologies (METs) are unique platforms that combine microbial metabolism with electrochemistry for various value-added applications (Sravan et al, 2021). Over the last 2 decades, many different applications of METs have been demonstrated: 1) bioenergy generation, such as bio-electricity in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) (Munoz-Cupa et al, 2020;Sravan et al, 2021), bio-hydrogen in microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) (Hua et al, 2019;Rousseau et al, 2020), and bio-methane in MEC assisted anaerobic digesters (Zakaria and Dhar, 2019;Huang et al, 2020); 2) synthesis of platform chemicals, such as hydrogen peroxide (Chung et al, 2020b;Zhao et al, 2021); 3) nutrient recovery (Zou et al, 2017;Barua et al, 2019); 4) water desalination (Al-Mamun et al, 2018;Jafary et al, 2020); 5) biosensors (Do et al, 2020;Chung et al, 2020a); and many more. Despite such tremendous potential, studies emphasized the challenges in system design and fabrication, which must be addressed to improve their performance and robustness, especially for scaling-up and commercialization (Dhar et al, 2016b;Sim et al, 2018;Zakaria and Dhar, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Mini-Review on Applications of 3D Printing for Microbial Electrochemical Technologies

Chung

Dhar

2021

Front. Energy Res.

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For the past two decades, many successful applications of microbial electrochemical technologies (METs), such as bioenergy generation, environmental monitoring, resource recovery, and platform chemicals production, have been demonstrated. Despite these tremendous potentials, the scaling-up and commercialization of METs are still quite challenging. Depending on target applications, common challenges may include expensive and tedious fabrication processes, prolonged start-up times, complex design requirements and their scalability for large-scale systems. Incorporating the three-dimensional printing (3DP) technologies have recently emerged as an effective and highly promising method for fabricating METs to demonstrate power generation and biosensing at the bench scale. Notably, low-cost and rapid fabrication of complex and miniaturized designs of METs was achieved, which is not feasible using the traditional methods. Utilizing 3DP showed tremendous potentials to aid the optimization of functional large-scale METs, which are essential for scaling-up purposes. Moreover, 3D-printed bioanode could provide rapid start-up in the current generation from METs without any time lags. Despite numerous review articles published on different scientific and applied aspects of METs, as per the authors’ knowledge, no published review articles explicitly highlighted the applicability and potential of 3DP for developing METs. Hence, this review targets to provide a current overview and status of 3DP applications for advancing METs and their future outlook.

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“…At the same time, valuable fertilizers can be made from the recovered nutrients. (Barua et al, 2019;Nancharaiah et al, 2016). They have proven their efficacy and potential in recovering nutrients from wastewater.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simultaneous nutrient recovery and algal biomass production from anaerobically digested sludge centrate using a membrane photobioreactor

Nguyen

Mofijur

et al. 2022

Bioresource Technology

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Microbial electrolysis followed by chemical precipitation for effective nutrients recovery from digested sludge centrate in WWTPs

Cited by 79 publications

References 44 publications

Mass fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorus through water reclamation facilities: Case study of biological nutrient removal, aerobic sludge digestion, and sidestream recycle

Mass fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorus through water reclamation facilities: Case study of biological nutrient removal, aerobic sludge digestion, and sidestream recycle

A Mini-Review on Applications of 3D Printing for Microbial Electrochemical Technologies

Simultaneous nutrient recovery and algal biomass production from anaerobically digested sludge centrate using a membrane photobioreactor

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