Bhushan, Brij

Cortina Pallás, José Luís

Gibert Agulló, Oriol

López Rodríguez, Julio

Reig i Amat, Mònica

Valderrama Angel, César Alberto

Vecino Bello, Xanel

Valderrama Ángel, César Alberto

Cortina Pallás, José Luis

UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC

Valorization of ammonium from urban waste waters as liquid fertilizers by integration of liquid-liquid membrane contactors and electrodialysis X. Vecino*, M. Reig*, B. Bhushan*, J. López*, C. Valderrama*, O. Gibert*,**, J.L. Cortina*,** *Chemical Engineering Department, UPC-Barcelona TECH; Barcelona Research Center for Multiscale Science and Engineering, C/ Eduard Maristany 10-14, Campus Diagonal-Besòs, 08930 Barcelona, Spain. **CETaqua, Carretera d'Esplugues, 75, 08940 Cornellà de Llobregat, Spain. Keywords: wastewater treatment; ammonium recovery; ammonium phosphate; liquid fertilizers; liquid-liquid contactors; electrodialysis. Introduction Nowadays, industrial and urban wastewaters have a huge ecological challenge due to the excessive release of reactive nitrogen compounds into the environment that pollute it and endanger human health (such as nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), ammonia (NH3), ammonium (NH4+) and nitrate (NO3)) (Sareer et al. 2016). For this reason, in this work the use of two innovative membrane techniques is proposed: liquid-liquid membrane contactors (LLMC) (Licon Bernal et al. 2016). and electrodialysis (ED) (Reig et al. 2014). By means of this integrated system it was possible to separate, concentrate and valorise the ammonia from urban effluents.  On the one hand, the LLMC allowed the separation and recovery of NH3 as ammonium phosphate (an added value to ammonium salts is their use as liquid fertilizes), and on the other hand, ammonium salts concentration was increased by ED to reach the required nitrogen percentage to be used as liquid fertilizer in the industry. Material and Methods Closed-loop experiments were carried out using a lab-scale LLMC (2.5x8 Liqui-Cel Membrane Contactor X-50 PP fiber, supplied by 3M Company (USA)) during 12.5 h at room temperature (25 ºC). The NH3 feed solution (60L (lumen tank), 1.6 g/L, pH=12), was pumped through the lumen side of the LLMC contactor at 450 mL/min, whereas the stripping phosphoric acid solution (0.5 L (shell tank), 0.4 mol/L) was circulated through the shell side in a counter-current mode at the same flow rate.  ED set-up PCCell ED 64-004 (from PCCell GmbH (Germany)) with a cell of 11×11 cm was used (5 cell pair). Membranes, with an active area of 64 cm2 each one, were supplied by Fujifilm and PCCell companies. Moreover, the effluent obtained from LLMC (NH4H2PO4 solution) was used as feed solution in the ED system. The initial volume of each stream was 1L. Diluate and concentrated solutions were pumped at 15-20 L/h, while the electrode rinse stream was pumped at 90-100 L/h. Constant voltage of 7.5 V was applied for all the experimental assays (voltage drop of 1 V for each cell pair (5 V) plus 2.5 V across the electrode compartment), while current 805density varied up to 4 A ~ 0.63 kA/m2 (5 A was the upper limit allowed by the power cell, Manson HCS-3202).  Results and Discussion  The results showed that the separation of ammonia from lumen tank (feed solution) to shell tank (ammonium phosphate solution) using LLMC was 86±3%; whereas it was possible to concentrate the ammonia 33.9 times after 12.5 h. Additionally, the concentration of ammonium phosphate achieved (from shell tank) as N and P2O5 were around 5±2% and 15±3%, respectively. Subsequently, the ammonium phosphate stream produced by LLMC was concentrated (concentration factor ≈ 50%) using both types of membranes (there were no differences in performance results) after 3.5 h of ED process. Conclusions Overall, these results highlighted the possibility to separate, concentrate and valorize ammonia from industrial streams, as ammonium phosphate salt, for producing liquid fertilizers through the integration of liquid-liquid membrane contactors and electrodialysis techniques. References Licon Bernal E.E., Maya C., Valderrama C., Cortina J.L., Valorization of ammonia concentrates from treated urban wastewater using liquid-liquid membrane contactors, Chem. Eng. J. 302 (2016) 641-649. Reig M., Casas S., Aladjem C., Valderrama C., Gibert O., Valero F., Centeno C.M., Larrotcha E., Cortina J.L., Concentration of NaCl from seawater reverse osmosis brines for the chlor-alkali industry by electrodialysis, Desalination 2 (2014) 107-117. Sareer O., Mazahar S., Al Khanum Akbari W.M.A. and Umar S., Nitrogen pollution, plants and human health, Plants, Pollutants and Remediation 1 (2016) 27-61. Acknowledgments This research was supported by the Waste2Product project (CTM2014-57302-R) financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) and the Catalan Government (Project Ref. SGR2014-50-SETRI), Spain. As well, Xanel Vecino thanks MINECO for her Juan de la Cierva contract (ref. FJCI-2014-19732) and Julio López for his pre-doctoral grant (ref. BES-2015-075051). 806

Valorization of ammonium from urban waste waters as liquid fertilizers by integration of liquid-liquid membrane contactors and electrodialysis

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Valorization of ammonium from urban waste waters as liquid fertilizers by integration of liquid-liquid membrane contactors and electrodialysis

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