1. Urine Souce Separation and Treatment: Opportunities for Beneficial Reuse of Phosphorus
Alicia Sendrowski (B.S., Dr. Treavor H. Boyer
2012)
Overview and Objectives
Phosphorus is an essential nutrient used in fertilizers as crops are generally phosphorus limited. This leads to its large presence in
wastewater through urine excretion and agricultural runoff. Since phosphorus is a nonrenewable resource, looking into its
potential for recovery and beneficial reuse will be an emerging concern as our current sources are depleted. Phosphorus is heavily
diluted by the other thousands of gallons that make up wastewater. Source separation and treatment is shown to be an effective
method of getting greater efficiency of removal by treating a concentrated waste stream. The goal of this research is to use source
separation to effectively remove phosphorus use ion exchange and look into its beneficial reuse.
The specific objectives of this research are to remove phosphorus from urine using ion exchange processes. The effects of
potential competing ions such as citrate and sulfate with respect to removal will be addressed. Removal of nitrogen and
potassium will also be looked at with the hope of eventually collecting all nutrients separately for use as fertilizer. The approach
is to apply different ion exchange resin doses to fully utilize both resin and removal efficiency for a specific nutrient. Two
different types of urine, fresh and hydrolyzed (also called aged) will be looked at to determine the difference between removal of
stored and fresh urine. Equilibrium and kinetic tests will be run to obtain optimum removal and resin dose. Then in separate tests
a specified amount of citrate and sulfate will be added to one batch of fresh and hydrolyzed urine.
Conclusions
 Optimum removal of phosphorus in fresh and hydrolyzed urine was achieved using an equilibrium time of 2 hours.
 Phos-x resin was used at concentrations ranging from 50mL/L up to 500mL/L lead to removal efficiency of 20% up to
99% removal for the highest dose in fresh urine.
 Hydrolyzed urine was found to react differently than fresh urine with less efficient removal as compared to fresh urine
for the corresponding resin dose. Removal efficiency still reached up to 90%.
 The effects of competing ions such as sulfate, citrate, and introduction of pharmaceuticals still need to be assessed to
see if removal changes.
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Treavor H. Boyer, Ph.D. ~ Assistant Professor ~ Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences ~ University of Florida
thboyer@ufl.edu ~ 352.846.3351 ~ www.ees.ufl.edu/homepp/boyer ~ www.twitter.com/WaterWeUpTo