AMMONIA REMOVAL PROCESS

• REMOVE AMMONIA AT A FRACTION OF THE COST OF BIOLOGICAL TREATMENT
• HOW CASTION HELPS REMOVE AMMONIA
• AMMONIA REMOVAL PROCESS

Remove Ammonia at a Fraction of the Cost of Biological Treatment

Remove the ammonia in industrial wastewater and from municipal wastewater at a fraction of the cost of biological treatment with CASTion's Ammonia Recovery Process (ARP). There is ammonia in industrial wastewater systems as it enters the plant. Additional ammonia is released in the aerobic or anaerobic digester as it reduces sludge volumes. This ammonia is concentrated in the centrate or filtrate streams as the sludge is separated and consolidated in the filter press or centrifuge.   Many industrial applications use ammonia as a part of their process chemistry and it finds its way into the industrial wastewater as a contaminate.

How CASTion Helps Remove Ammonia

Typically, 40-50% of the total nitrogen in a municipal wastewater treatment plant is found as ammonia in the centrate or filtrate streams. During ammonia removal, wastewater progresses through the RCAST Ammonia Removal and Recovery Process.  This is a compact, high efficiency system, that combines flash vacuum distillation with ion exchange to remove 90% of the ammonia in these streams at a much lower cost than traditional biological removal systems. This results in the recovery of ammonia for reuse as ammonium sulfate, a common fertilizer.  After undergoing successful ammonia removal, wastewater is then recycled back to the main municipal plant or used as process water in an industrial process.

Ammonia Removal Process

To begin the Ammonia Removal Process, the ammonia in industrial wastewater is conditioned so that neither suspended solids nor precipitates can reach the ammonia removal systems. If the ammonia concentration is high, vacuum stripping using our patented RCAST ammonia removal systems is used to capture the ammonia that would readily volatilize (about 80%). Influent (with 300 ppm ammonia-nitrogen or less) is then input to an industrial grade ion exchange resin which selectively adsorbs the ammonia. The adsorption columns are regenerated using either a brine or sulfuric acid. The regeneration solution is used repeatedly, where the ammonia concentration builds up to several thousand ppm. The spent ammonia-laden regeneration solution is stripped of ammonia to produce a commercial-grade (about 40%) solution of ammonium sulfate. The figure below illustrates the process:

Contact Us to learn more about ARP and our ammonia removal systems and how we can help you achieve significant savings.