×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Excessive nitrogen in wastewater. Need treatment.

Excessive nitrogen in wastewater. Need treatment.

Excessive nitrogen in wastewater. Need treatment.

(OP)
My electronics mfg. plant is increasing the amount of ammonia compounds used in the process. We are approaching the nitrogen limit on our discharge permit. I am interested in hearing about treatment technologies that would allow reduction of N. We operate a pretreatment (primarily neutralization) plant prior to sending to sewer authority. Thanks in advance.

RE: Excessive nitrogen in wastewater. Need treatment.

Ammonia-derived chemicals could be oxidized, for example, with strong oxidants such as permanganate or chlorine compounds.

If all other pollutants have been eliminated in your pretreat station, and only excess nitrogen (N) is to be dealt with, effluent waters could be used to enrich N-deficient grounds. N is considered essential for growing vegetables. Leafy vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, and cabbage benefit from fertilizers with a high N content.

If such a disposal isn't convenient or practical, consider percolating your water through a bed of a N-deficient vegetal substrate, which could then be used as mulch to enrich soils.

Suggest you post your query in the Civil/Environmental Engineers' "waste disposal & treatment" forum to get first-class expertise. Good luck.

RE: Excessive nitrogen in wastewater. Need treatment.

bobhearn11,

Please provide the following the information so that I can give you a suggestion:
(1) Daily flowrate into city sewer
(2) pH
(3) conductivity (TDS)
(4) TSS
(5) BOD
(6) COD


RE: Excessive nitrogen in wastewater. Need treatment.

Nitrification / denitrification in an activated sludge process may work.

[Ammonia to Nitrates (aerobic) to Nitrogen gas (anoxic).]

Standard configurations may be time based (intermittent eg. SBR) or continuous (MLE, A2O etc etc).

Post your wastewater details and give us a look!

Cheers.

RE: Excessive nitrogen in wastewater. Need treatment.

Depending on your ammonia levels and discharge limits, it may be feasible for you to add some NaCl to the wastewater and use anodic oxidation through an EC cell. Chlorides will form the chlorine compounds in-situ and oxidize the NH3.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources