title: Fate of 17β-Estradiol as a model estrogen in source separated urine during integrated chemical P recovery and treatment using partial nitritation-anammox process.
abstract: Recently, research on source separation followed by the treatment of urine and/or resource recovery from human urine has shown promise as an emerging management strategy. Despite contributing only 1% of the total volume of wastewater, human urine contributes about 80% of the nitrogen, 70% of the potassium, and up to 50% of the total phosphorus in wastewater. It is also a known fact that many of the micropollutants, especially selected estrogens, get into municipal wastewater through urine excretion. In this research, we investigated the fate of 17β-estradiol (E2) as a model estrogen during struvite precipitation from synthetic urine followed by the treatment of urine using a partial nitritation-anammox (PN/A) system. Single-stage and two-stage suspended growth PN/A configurations were used to remove the nitrogen in urine after struvite precipitation. The results showed an almost 95% phosphorous and 5% nitrogen recovery/removal from the synthetic urine due to struvite precipitation. The single and two stage PN/A processes were able to remove around 50% and 75% of ammonia and nitrogen present in the post struvite urine solution, respectively. After struvite precipitation, more than 95% of the E2 remained in solution and the transformation of E2 to E1 happened during urine storage. Most of the E2 removal that occurred during the PN/A process was due to sorption on the biomass and biodegradation (transformation of E2 to E1, and slow degradation of E1 to other metabolites). These results demonstrate that a combination of chemical and biological unit processes will be needed to recover and manage nutrients in source separated urine.
authors: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Utah, 110 South Campus Drive, MCE 2000, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
authors: Pei
authors: P
authors: Huang
authors: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Utah, 110 South Campus Drive, MCE 2000, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
authors: Sachiyo T
authors: ST
authors: Mukherji
authors: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Utah, 110 South Campus Drive, MCE 2000, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
authors: Sha
authors: S
authors: Wu
authors: Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, 315 South 1400 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
authors: James
authors: J
authors: Muller
authors: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Utah, 110 South Campus Drive, MCE 2000, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA. Electronic address: ram.goel@utah.edu.
authors: Ramesh
authors: R
authors: Goel
mesh_terms: D004958:Estradiol; D004967:Estrogens; D006801:Humans; D009584:Nitrogen / Q000378:metabolism; D010758:Phosphorus / Q000378:metabolism; D062065:Wastewater
chemical_list: D004958:Estradiol; D004967:Estrogens; D009584:Nitrogen; D010758:Phosphorus; D062065:Wastewater
keywords: 17β -estradiol; Nutrients recovery; Partial nitritation/anammox (PN/A); Struvite; Urine source separation