University of Burundi
Burundi
Problem Statement
As populations grow and natural environments become degraded in Africa, there is an increasing need for the recovery of nutrients from wastewater and other aqueous waste streams for agricultural use. This project tries to solve the issues related to surface water pollution by utilizing green fertilizer, which leads to water reclamation and recovery.
Progress Highlights
A qualitative and quantitative value of AWS in terms of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) content is now known. The 100% of total suspended solids (TSS) were removed from AWS. The concentration of N, P, and DOC samples without suspended solids and turbidity was obtained.
Key Findings
Ultrafiltration separated DOC from nutrients at a rate of 95% at 5 bar. The permeate was fed to electrodialysis to separate/recover phosphorus and nitrogen. In the base and acid compartments, nitrogen and phosphorus were recovered at the rate of 90 % and 85% ammonium and phosphate at 30 V, respectively.
Potential Impact
Combining membrane filtration and bipolar electrodialysis is a good strategy for protecting the environment and producing green fertilizers. The process can be used to amend the soil or can be used in a balanced ratio of effluents by considering the needs of the plants and for a high yield.
Summary
As populations grow and natural environments become degraded in Africa there is an increasing need for nutrients recovery from wastewater and other aqueous waste streams for use in agriculture. Dr Bunani’s research will work on the development of an integrated system consisting of membrane filtration and an electromembrane process for separation and recovery of nutrients from aqueous liquid waste.
Grantee Description
Dr Samuel Bunani currently works at the Department of Chemistry, University of Burundi. He obtained his PhD in Analytical Chemistry in 2017 from Ege University, Turkey. Dr Bunani does research in Analytical Chemistry applied to environmental issues.
He is mostly interested in water quality analysis, membrane separation technology (NF and RO) for water reuse, electromembrane processes for wastewater management using electrodialysis (ED) and recovery of valuable chemicals from water using bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BMED). His interest includes inorganic water traces decontamination using ED and ultrapure water production using electrodeionization (EDI).
The future perspective of Dr Bunani is to develop efficient technologies and strategies for safe water supply and clean environment by managing the available water resources and aqueous waste streams. From this liquid waste management, he intends to recover nutrients to supply farmers green fertilizers for soil amelioration.
Project: Development of an Electrochemical Process for Recovery of Nutrients from Liquid Waste Resources (e-Pro4ReNs)
The development of electromembrane process for a sustainable environmental, agricultural and industrialvalorization of bio-liquid waste is a core challenge for a bio-based economy realization. This project aims to design, develop and apply an electromembrane based process to recover organic carbon and nutrients from aqueous waste streams (AWS). AWS highly loaded in total organic carbon (TOC) and nutrients include animal manure slurry, liquid phase of digestate of municipal wastewater treatment processes, etc. Contents of such streams should be viewed as resources of green fertilizers for agriculture. However, direct application of AWS as fertilizer is subjected to various limitations due to the imbalance ratio of nutrients, high variability of nutrients composition, high moisture content, and required specialized equipment. Recovery of TOC and nutrients from AWS should be a good way of liquid waste valorisation. The innovative process invests the features of monopolar and bipolar ion exchange membranes in a single electromembrane process configuration. The process will be able to produce acid and base itself that are mostly required by existing techniques for nutrients recovery. By recovering these nutrients, reducing chemical inputs and wastewater discharge in surface water; the overall objectives of this project are contribution to better food and societal economic improvement by the utilization of green fertilizers in agriculture and protection of the environment by innovative liquid waste management. Briefly, Dr Bunani wants to supply to farmers well balanced fertilizers which are environmentally friendly, to contribute to zero-discharge of AWS and to clean water production.
