Removal of Nitrate and Ammonia from Wastewater

Abstract

Ammonia and nitrate contamination of groundwater, surface water, and other water resources is considered a serious environmental and human health issue that causes several problems like algae bloom, fatal illnesses specially for the infant under 6 months. Electrochemical techniques for ammonia oxidation and nitrate reduction reactions are usually straightforward, energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly, and easy to control. Electrochemical techniques for separate removal of ammonia and nitrate has been extensively studied. However, in this work, we demonstrate a new process that addresses both water pollutants simultaneously in a single cell that leads to a considerable energy saving in the order of 90 % and 35-65 % less energy per grams of ammonia and nitrate removal, respectively. A new flow cell with novel electrode architectures is introduced to perform both ammonia/nitrate removal simultaneously. The concentration of nitrate and ammonia were measured according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards which is a UV-vis spectrophotometric based technique, and ammonia Ion Selective Electrode (ISE-THERMO), respectively. Effect of electrode loading and other process variables on the ammonia and nitrate removal rates were evaluated. Findings of this work will be presented at the meeting.