A Comparative Study on Removal of Ammoniacal Nitrogen by Chemical and Biological Processes

Abstract

Nutrient compound such as ammoniacal nitrogen (NH4-N), often present in different types of waters and wastewaters, can find their way to lakes, rivers and drinking water reservoirs and are alleviation of environmental problems including eutrophication, corrosion and fouling. Also, the Indian pharmaceutical industry is estimated to grow at 22.4% compound annual growth rate over the next 5 years. Therefore, it is necessary to treat the waste that is being generated from the treatment process to meet the stringent discharge. For this, a comparative study was conducted by performing series of experiments at laboratory scale by chemical process in which one of the most innovative and advanced physicochemical process was used, namely, MAP Process (Struvite crystallization) and its comparative study was made with the biological treatment process which was conducted using microbial growth of bacterial sppi for treating pharmaceutical wastewater. MAP process is also known as struvite formation was used under chemical treatment process which includes precipitation of struvite formation by addition of magnesium source followed by addition of phosphate source and mixed bacterial culture sppi was used under biological treatment process for the treatment of pharma waste mainly for the removal of ammoniacal nitrogen. Different stoichiometric ratios were tested and an optimum ratio was found for the maximum NH4-N removal for the effluent. And their comparative studies with biological process, in which different mixed bacterial sppi were carried out for removal of NH4-N. Biological processes are time-consuming but non-polluting. Different concentrations of mixed bacterial culture give different percentage removal of ammoniacal nitrogen and their removal efficiencies were compared with MAP process results.