Simultaneous resource recovery and ammonia volatilization minimization in animal husbandry and agriculture

• Main Authors: M. Ganesapillai, Prithvi Simha, Karan Desai, Yash Sharma, Tabrez Ahmed
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tomsk Polytechnic University 2016-03-01
• Series: Resource-Efficient Technologies
• Subjects: Cattle urine; Microwave activated carbon; Sustainable agriculture; Immobilized column adsorption; Waste management; Breakthrough
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405653715300385

The study demonstrates that the minimization of ammonia volatilization and urea recovery could be coupled through the use of physical adsorption processes in continuous packed-bed columns. The potential of using microwave activated coconut shell based activated carbon toward the recovery of urea from cattle urine was investigated. The prepared carbon was immobilized onto etched glass beads to investigate the effect of initial concentration, flow rate and size of carbon support in a continuous, down-flow mode packed column. Further, to describe the sorption behavior, the experimental data were tested against different kinetic models. The analysis of the breakthrough curves allowed identification of the favorable operating parameters as: sorbate flow (8 L⋅h−1), initial urea concentration (60%) and glass bead support size (ϕ 1.5 cm). An equilibrium sorption of 802.8 mg⋅g−1 and up to 80% urea recovery was observed. Regeneration studies allowed for nearly 95% urea recovery with sorbent capacity decreasing by 5% over seven cycles of sorption/desorption.