Ammonia adsorption and recovery from swine wastewater permeate using naturally occurring clinoptilolite

Abstract

This study aims to successfully demonstrate natural clinoptilolite based ammonia capture from real swine wastewater and simulated Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor (AnMBR) treated swine permeate through extensive experimental analysis. The surface structure as well as elemental and chemical composition of both treated and untreated clinoptilolite particles were characterized using Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) - Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Column experiments revealed that the breakthrough times for the real swine and synthetic swine wastewaters were similar indicating that the wastewater matrix did not really have an effect on ammonia adsorption. Ion release profiles showed Na+ to be the main counterion for NH4+ capture. The presence of K+ ion had the greatest impact on ammonia adsorption and the selectivity series was determined to be K+ > Ca2+ > Na+ > Mg2+. Simultaneous removal of P from real and synthetic swine wastewaters was observed and confirmed by scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) data as well as the ion-release profile data. Additionally, sustained regenerability of sorbed clinoptilolite was demonstrated using brine solution through alternating cycles of adsorption and desorption.