Phosphate Sorption and Removal From Dairy Effluent Using Zeolites and Pumice
Mentor 1
Martin Dangelmayr
Start Date
28-4-2023 12:00 AM
Description
Phosphates are a very common and difficult to deal with source of water contamination that generally originate from agricultural runoff and wastewater treatment. While phosphates require fairly high concentrations to be toxic, excess phosphates are a major cause of eutrophication; this is where a body of water contains too many nutrients and algae grows out of control. Government guidelines allow only very low concentrations of phosphates to be directly discharged into rivers or lakes, and so wastewater has to be treated in order to do so. Our goal was to see if zeolites and pumice could be used as inexpensive ways to treat cheese production effluent via sorption. The way we tested this was by first creating many 40mL samples with different combinations of water, zeolites, pumice, CaCl2, phosphate sources, and pH values and then placing them on a shaker table for a week. A molybdenum compound was then added that turns blue in the presence of phosphate; how dark of a blue indicates the relative concentration of phosphate remaining and was measured using a spectrophotometer. Promising results were then measured for phosphate and other common chemicals by Tim Wahl at the School of Freshwater Sciences. We found that no combination produced a meaningful reduction in phosphate concentrations. While it was not our target, some samples did see a significant decrease in nitrogen levels, which is another problem chemical that can cause many of the same issues in water that phosphates do. Our initial goal of inexpensive phosphate reduction did not work out, but the amount of nitrogen reduction we saw was significant enough that it could potentially be followed up on. The difficulty we had in making our processes work with phosphates shows how difficult removing them and other contaminants from water can be.
Phosphate Sorption and Removal From Dairy Effluent Using Zeolites and Pumice
Phosphates are a very common and difficult to deal with source of water contamination that generally originate from agricultural runoff and wastewater treatment. While phosphates require fairly high concentrations to be toxic, excess phosphates are a major cause of eutrophication; this is where a body of water contains too many nutrients and algae grows out of control. Government guidelines allow only very low concentrations of phosphates to be directly discharged into rivers or lakes, and so wastewater has to be treated in order to do so. Our goal was to see if zeolites and pumice could be used as inexpensive ways to treat cheese production effluent via sorption. The way we tested this was by first creating many 40mL samples with different combinations of water, zeolites, pumice, CaCl2, phosphate sources, and pH values and then placing them on a shaker table for a week. A molybdenum compound was then added that turns blue in the presence of phosphate; how dark of a blue indicates the relative concentration of phosphate remaining and was measured using a spectrophotometer. Promising results were then measured for phosphate and other common chemicals by Tim Wahl at the School of Freshwater Sciences. We found that no combination produced a meaningful reduction in phosphate concentrations. While it was not our target, some samples did see a significant decrease in nitrogen levels, which is another problem chemical that can cause many of the same issues in water that phosphates do. Our initial goal of inexpensive phosphate reduction did not work out, but the amount of nitrogen reduction we saw was significant enough that it could potentially be followed up on. The difficulty we had in making our processes work with phosphates shows how difficult removing them and other contaminants from water can be.
