ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Nitrogen and Phosphate Recovery
from Source-Separated Urine by Dosing
with Magnesite and Zeolite
Suyun Xu, Liwen Luo, Hongfu He, Hongbo Liu, Lifeng Cui
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Environment and Low-Carbon Research Center, School of Environment and Architecture,
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
Submission date: 2015-04-17
Final revision date: 2015-05-13
Acceptance date: 2015-05-14
Publication date: 2015-09-21
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2015;24(5):2269-2275
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ABSTRACT
There is increasing interest in source separation and treatment of urine so as to recover nitrogen and
phosphate more efficiently than treating combined wastewater. Although previous studies primarily focused
on struvite precipitation for the recovery of phosphorus, the composition of urine changes during storage.
The present study compared the precipitation conditions for fresh urine and hydrolyzed urine. The optimal
conditions for struvite crystallization were obtained from orthogonal experiment and single-factor optimization.
The pH of fresh urine should be adjusted to around 9.5-10.0 to make the reaction thorough, while this
was unnecessary for hydrolyzed urine. To reduce cost, magnesite was selected as an alternative for pure MgO,
which presented similar efficiency for phosphate recovery. About 92.4% of phosphorus and 87.2% of ammonia-
nitrogen were recovered from urine when adding 2.5 g/L of magnesite and 375 g/L of zeolite to get struvite
crystals and nitrogen-rich zeolite as a slow-release fertilizer.