Empirical Study on Applicability of Phosphorus Recovery Process in Wastewater Treatment Plant

Abstract

In this study, we have made the annual total phosphorus (TP) mass balance diagrams for I wastewater treatment plant by utilizing the data of flow rate and TP of each process and tried to choose the optimum unit process empirically for phosphorus recovery. For the applicability evaluation, we have suggested several quantitative indices of flow rate, TP concentration, TP load and SS. Based on the analyses of TP mass balance, it became clear for reducing TP load of the wastewater treatment plant that it is efficient to recover phosphorus from the side stream in which the amount of flow rate is just 1/16, but TP concentration and load are 78 and 4.8 times larger than those of the influent of the plant. After the detailed applicability evaluation for the side stream, it could be concluded that the unit process of waste activated sludge thickener supernatant or dehydration filtrate are appropriate. Meanwhile, we did fundamental experiments utilizing the dewatering filtrate with TP concentration of 141.5 mg/L. After adjusting pH 10 and Ca2+ concentration 250, 500, 1000 mg/L, it was stirred slowly. As a result, the PO4-P and TP removal efficiencies were above 95 percent; the results of the experiment imply the applicability of phosphorus recovery process in a wastewater treatment plant strongly. Key words: Side Stream, Phosphorus Recovery, Hydroxyapatite, Phosphorus Mass Balance, Wastewater Treatment Plant