An increasing world population and nutrient demand (e.g. Nitrogen and Phosphorus) require more and more fertilizer. At the same time, nutrients in wastewater are removed to protect waterbodies. Therefore, nutrient recovery from wastewater streams is important to create a more sustainable future.
Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) can convert organics in wastewater streams into electricity, which can be used to recover total ammonium nitrogen (TAN). This promising TAN recovery technique is also energy efficient as part of the electricity is gained from wastewater biodegradable organics and OH- needed for ammonia stripping is produced at the cathode.
This project will further BESs for TAN recovery. Suitable wastewater streams will be identified and assessed for electrogenic biodegradability for different COD:N ratios. Performance of existing systems will be improved at laboratory scale. Resulting findings will be translated into an up-scaled design and recovery demonstrated at a larger scale using an earlier identified suitable wastewater.