Thesis
EVALUATION OF BIOFILTRATION MEDIA MIXES FOR MAXIMIZING PHOSPHORUS REMOVAL FROM STORMWATER
Washington State University
Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
01/2021
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000002450
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/121073
Abstract
Phosphorus (P) is the limiting nutrient in most freshwater ecosystems. Although it is an essential nutrient for plant life, excessive P loading to receiving surface waters can result in algal blooms, toxic algae, large extents of macrophytes, and eutrophication. In the United States, as human activities expand and anthropogenic P loads increase, this nutrient is becoming a growing concern, especially in urban areas. Previous research has shown that materials like water treatment residuals, lime, biochar, iron-coated sand, zeolite, fly ash, oyster shells, sawdust, clay, sand, zeolite, and dolomite can be effective for the removal of different contaminants from stormwater. However, most of the studies have been performed on a single adsorptive material so that there is no side-by-side comparison based on which material or group of materials can be identified that has the superior P removal capacity of all. Moreover, there has been limited research performed on incorporating these materials into bioretention and biofiltration systems to optimize the performance of these systems for removing phosphorus from stormwater runoff. This study aims to compare the phosphorus removal efficiency of a large spectrum of materials and find a way to make efficient and sustainable biofiltration media mixes to maximize phosphorus removal from stormwater. Our pilot jar screening result suggests that materials like alum-based water treatment residual (WTR), fine wollastonite, a few biochars, activated alumina, zero-valent iron (ZVI) aggregate, layered double hydroxide (LDH), chitosan, and granulated activated carbon (GAC) can effectively remove P from an aqueous solution. Both Langmuir and Freundlich linear isotherm model was applied to identify parameters like maximum adsorption capacity, adsorption constant, and adsorption intensity for these materials in terms of P removal. From the column study, it can be concluded that the inclusion of materials like activated alumina, WTR, LDH, ZVI aggregate, and chitosan (20% v/v) into the bioretention cell could significantly increase P removal efficiency up to 90% and in some cases more than 95%.
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Details
- Title
- EVALUATION OF BIOFILTRATION MEDIA MIXES FOR MAXIMIZING PHOSPHORUS REMOVAL FROM STORMWATER
- Creators
- Md. Arafat Ali
- Contributors
- Nigel Pickering (Advisor)Jan Boll (Committee Member)Anand Jayakaran (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 109
- Identifiers
- 99900606855501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis