Second Cheese Whey Treatment Using Zeolite under Continuous Flow Mode and Its Application on Wheat Growth

Aggelos Kotoulas,Athanasia G Tekerlekopoulou,Dimitra Agathou,Dimitrios V Vayenas,Triantafyllos I Tatoulis,Irene E Triantaphyllidou,Christos S Akratos

doi:10.3390/w11050928

Aggelos Kotoulas, Athanasia G Tekerlekopoulou + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/w11050928

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Journal: Water	Publication Date: May 1, 2019
Citations: 11	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Patras, Democritus University of Thrace

Abstract

The efficiency of natural zeolite to treat second cheese whey (SCW) and remove ammonium from artificial wastewater (AWW) was examined. Since zeolite has been reported to improve nitrogen availability in soils, its effect on wheat plant growth was also examined. Continuing a previous study using batch reactors, results are presented concerning experiments in fixed-bed columns under continuous operation. Results from the continuous flow column experiments using AWW and zeolite (2.0–2.8 mm) indicated that low flow rates (4 mL/min and 8 mL/min) did not significantly affect zeolite adsorption ability, while maximum zeolite adsorption capacity reached 15.30 mg NH4+-N/g. Finally, the effect of zeolite saturated with NH4+-N on plant growth was examined. The application of saturated zeolite affected significantly wheat plant growth and resulted in faster growth and higher biomass production.

Highlights

IntroductionDue to their large volumes, high pollutant loads, and seasonality, agro-industrial wastewaters (e.g., from dairies, olive mills, and wineries) pose a serious environmental threat if released untreated [1,2]
Due to their large volumes, high pollutant loads, and seasonality, agro-industrial wastewaters pose a serious environmental threat if released untreated [1,2]
The purpose of this study was to examine the use of zeolite to treat second cheese whey (SCW)

Summary

Introduction

Due to their large volumes, high pollutant loads, and seasonality, agro-industrial wastewaters (e.g., from dairies, olive mills, and wineries) pose a serious environmental threat if released untreated [1,2]. Water 2019, 11, 928 economy principles express that wastewater treatment should be combined with simultaneous energy production and/or nutrient recovery. For this purpose, various zeolites (natural or modified) have been tested as low-cost absorbents to adsorb nutrients (i.e., nitrogen and phosphorus) from agro-industrial wastewater streams [9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. Kolakovic et al [13]

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