Techno-economic analysis of sidestream ammonia removal technologies: Biological options versus thermal stripping.

Over the past twenty years, various commercial technologies have been deployed to remove ammonia (NH-N) from anaerobic digestion (AD) liquors. In recent years many anaerobic digesters have been upgraded to include a pre-treatment, such as the thermal hydrolysis process (THP), to produce more biogas, increasing NH-N concentrations in the liquors are costly to treat. This study provides a comparative techno-economic assessment of sidestream technologies to remove NH-N from conventional AD and THP/AD dewatering liquors: a deammonification continuous stirred tank reactor (PNA), a nitrification/denitrification sequencing batch reactor (SBR) and thermal ammonia stripping process with an ammonia scrubber (STRIP).

Ammonia removal from thermal hydrolysis dewatering liquors via three different deammonification technologies.

The benefits of deammonification to remove nitrogen from sidestreams, i.e., sludge dewatering liquors, in municipal wastewater treatment plants are well accepted.