The presence of nitrogen in wastewater represents a risk to public health and aquatic ecosystems due to eutrophication, which can be avoided by removing this nutrient before discharging wastewater into the environment.
Nitrogen (N) is a pollutant present in wastewater that must be removed for many reasons:
– Reduces dissolved oxygen in surface waters.
– It is toxic to the aquatic ecosystem.
– It represents a risk to public health, and with phosphorus (P), they are responsible for the excessive growth of photosynthetic organisms (eutrophication).
These and other factors make the legislation increasingly restrictive in terms of the maximum limits allowed for this parameter.
Nitrogen can be present in multiple forms in wastewater, and the transformations it can undergo in different treatment processes are diverse. These transformations make it possible to convert ammoniacal nitrogen into other products that can be easily separated from wastewater.
In the nitrification and denitrification process, the removal of nitrogen is achieved in two conversion stages. In nitrification, the oxygen demand of ammonia is reduced by converting it to nitrate. However, in this step, the nitrogen has hardly changed shape and has not been removed. In the second step, denitrification, the nitrate turns into a gaseous product that is eliminated.
This process of eliminating nitrogen in wastewater constitutes the most suitable biological method since it has a high elimination efficiency, high stability, and reliability, as well as easy control of the process and lower costs than other treatments.
To reduce the high concentrations, eliminating or recovering the nitrogen contained in the wastewater, large amounts of energy are used. This has promoted the investigation of new technologies capable of valuing the chemical energy and the nutrients contained in these waters.
At Bclear, we have developed a technology capable of removing nitrogen from wastewater with our treatment plants. Learn more at www.bclear-water.com