Electro-concentration of nutrients from waste streams is a promising technology to enable resource recovery, but has several operational concerns. One key concern is the formation of inorganic scale on the concentrate side of cation exchange membranes when recovering nutrients from wastewaters containing calcium, magnesium, phosphorous and carbonate, commonly present in anaerobic digester rejection water. Electrodialytic nutrient recovery was trialed on anaerobic digester rejection water in a laboratory scale electro-concentration unit without treatment (A), following struvite recovery (B), and following struvite recovery as well as concentrate controlled at pH 5 for scaling control (C). Treatment A resulted in large amount of scale, while treatment B significantly reduced the amount of scale formation with reduction in magnesium phosphates, and treatment C reduced the amount of scale further by limiting the formation of calcium carbonates. Treatment C resulted in an 87 ± 7% by weight reduction in scale compared to treatment A. A mechanistic model for the inorganic processes was validated using a previously published general precipitation model based on saturation index. The model attributed the reduction in struvite scale to the removal of phosphate during the struvite pre-treatment, and the reduction in calcium carbonate scale to pH control resulting in the stripping of carbonate as carbon dioxide gas. This indicates that multiple strategies may be required to control precipitation, and that mechanistic models can assist in developing a combined approach.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 30 November 2016.
All research outputs
#17,286,379
of 25,374,647 outputs
Outputs from Water Research
#7,152
of 11,875 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#261,288
of 415,970 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Water Research
#94
of 147 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,374,647 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 21st percentile – i.e., 21% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 11,875 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 5.0. This one is in the 35th percentile – i.e., 35% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 415,970 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 28th percentile – i.e., 28% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 147 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 28th percentile – i.e., 28% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
