A review on the integration of mainstream P-recovery strategies with enhanced biological phosphorus removal

Congcong Zhang, Albert Guisasola*, Juan Antonio Baeza

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articleResearchpeer-review

94 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Phosphorus (P), an essential nutrient for all organisms, urgently needs to be recovered due to the increasing demand and scarcity of this natural resource. Recovering P from wastewater is a feasible and promising way widely studied nowadays due to the need to remove P in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). When enhanced biological P removal (EBPR) is implemented, an innovative option is to recover P from the supernatant streams obtained in the mainstream water line, and then combine it with liquor-crystallisation recovery processes, being the final recovered product struvite, vivianite or hydroxyapatite. The basic idea of these mainstream P-recovery strategies is to take advantage of the ability of polyphosphate accumulating organisms (PAO) to increase P concentration under anaerobic conditions when some carbon source is available. This work shows the mainstream P-recovery technologies reported so far, both in continuous and sequenced batch reactors (SBR) based configurations. The amount of extraction, as a key parameter to balance the recovery efficiency and the maintenance of the EBPR of the system, should be the first design criterion. The maximum value of P-recovery efficiency for long-term operation with an adequate extraction ratio would be around 60%. Other relevant factors (e.g. COD/P ratio of the influent, need for an additional carbon source) and operational parameters (e.g. aeration, SRT, HRT) are also reported and discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Article number118102
Pages (from-to)118102
Number of pages15
JournalWater Research
Volume212
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2022

Keywords

  • (EBPR)
  • ANION-EXCHANGER
  • Bioreactors
  • Configurations
  • Enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR)
  • Enhanced biological phosphorus removal&nbsp
  • ION-EXCHANGE
  • MEMBRANE BIOREACTOR SYSTEM
  • Mainstream
  • NUTRIENT REMOVAL
  • PHOSPHATE-REMOVAL
  • PRECIPITATION
  • Phosphorus
  • Phosphorus recovery
  • Polyphosphates
  • Precipitation
  • SEQUENCING BATCH REACTOR
  • SEWAGE-SLUDGE ASH
  • STRUVITE FORMATION
  • Sewage
  • WASTE-WATER TREATMENT
  • Waste Water

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