Abstract
Simple SummaryDue to the increasing trend of swine consumption in recent decades, swine husbandry practices have become more intensive in Korea. Intensive swine farming practices inevitably result in an increment of wastewater production. Treatment of high strength swine wastewater (SWW) is therefore becoming a matter of concern in Korea. Moreover, with the increasing number of swine heads, swine farms are having issues with malodor, sanitation, and disease control. In this study, a novel integrated treatment process was tested for the simultaneous removal of pollutants and nutrient recovery from high strength swine wastewater. The integrated treatment process used in this study successfully removed the nutrients and other pollutants through biological treatment, recovered the nutrients using struvite crystallization process and decolorized as well as disinfected the effluent before discharge into water bodies by electrochemical treatment. Therefore, using the proposed integrated treatment process, it might be possible to ensure efficient SWW management along with societal and environmental sustainability.In this study, a novel treatment approach combining biological treatment, struvite crystallization, and electrochemical treatment was developed and its efficiency for the simultaneous removal of pollutants and recovery of nutrients from high strength swine wastewater (SWW) was verified. For all the parameters, maximum removal efficiencies in the lab-scale test were obtained in the range of 93.0–98.7% except for total solids (TS) (79.4%). Farm-scale process showed overall removal efficiencies for total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), soluble total organic carbon (sTOC), and color as 94.5%, 67.0%, 96.1%, and 98.9%, respectively, while TS, suspended solids (SS), ammonium nitrogen (NH4-N), and ortho-phosphate (O-P) concentrations were reduced by 91.5%, 99.6%, 98.6%, and 91.9%, respectively. Moreover, the struvite recovered from SWW showed heavy metal concentrations within the range of the Korean standard for fertilizers and feedstocks and thus, suggesting its potential application as fertilizer and in animal feed production. Using the proposed process, the SWW was converted to liquid compost as a quick-acting fertilizer, struvite as a slow-release fertilizer, and the decolorized and disinfected effluent after electrochemical treatment was safe for discharge according to Korean standard. Therefore, the novel integrated treatment process used in this study can be considered as a solution for SWW management and for the simultaneous removal and recycling of nutrients (N and P).
Highlights
The swine production worldwide has excessively increased with the growing as the demand for meat and meat products [1]
A laboratory experiment conducted by Luo et al revealed that continuous aeration at low redox potentials using aeration rate of 0.0667 L/min for swine wastewater (SWW) treatment, removed 32% NH4 -N, 24% total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN), 26% organic C, and 75% O-P within 24 h, while the removal efficiency was reported to be approximately half in case of intermittent aeration compared to continuous aeration [10]
The results showed that about 98.5% NH4 -N, 91% total nitrogen (TN), and 90% soluble total organic carbon (sTOC) were removed during biological treatment
Summary
The swine production worldwide has excessively increased with the growing as the demand for meat and meat products [1]. When the electrochemical process is used as final polishing method as some of the pollutants (ammonium [23], sulfide [24], and organics [25]) can be oxidized through direct or indirect oxidation [26] and has the potential to be used for treating the effluents of struvite crystallization process before discharge into the environment Several oxidizing agents such as Fenton’s reagent, peroxide, sodium chloride, chlorine etc. The process utilizes biological treatment for liquid compost production, struvite crystallization for nutrient recovery and electrochemical oxidation as a final polishing treatment before discharge into water bodies
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