Removal and recovery of nutrients as struvite from anaerobic digestion residues of poultry manure

Abstract

The removal and the recovery of nutrients, namely nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from anaerobically digested and solid–liquid separated manure effluents via struvite precipitation were investigated. Both the liquid and the solid phases of the poultry manure digester effluent were subjected to struvite precipitation experiments. The Mg:N:P molar ratio of 1:1:1 in the liquid phase resulted in an average NH4‐N removal efficiency of 86.4%, which increased to 97.4% by adjusting the Mg:N:P ratio to 1.5:1:1. The acidic phosphorus‐dissolution process was applied to the solid phase of the effluent to obtain a phosphorus‐enriched solution. Nutrient recovery experiments with NaOH as the buffering reagent were conducted with and without addition of external chemicals (Mg and P sources) to evaluate the influence of the Mg:N:P molar ratio, the Mg:P molar ratio and pH. All the experiments depicted complete PO4‐P (99.6–100.0%) and partial NH4‐N (3.3–65.6%) recoveries from the phosphorus‐enriched solution.