Release Mechanism, Secondary Pollutants and Denitrification Performance Comparison of Six Kinds of Agricultural Wastes as Solid Carbon Sources for Nitrate Removal

Yu Ling, Guokai Yan, Haiyan Wang, Weiyang Dong, Huan Wang, Yang Chang, Ming Chang and Congyu Li
Additional contact information
Yu Ling: Research Center of Environmental Pollution Control Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Science, Beijing 100012, China
Guokai Yan: Research Center of Environmental Pollution Control Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Science, Beijing 100012, China
Haiyan Wang: Research Center of Environmental Pollution Control Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Science, Beijing 100012, China
Weiyang Dong: Research Center of Environmental Pollution Control Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Science, Beijing 100012, China
Huan Wang: Research Center of Environmental Pollution Control Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Science, Beijing 100012, China
Yang Chang: Research Center of Environmental Pollution Control Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Science, Beijing 100012, China
Ming Chang: Basin Research Center for Water Pollution Control, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Science, Beijing 100012, China
Congyu Li: Research Center of Environmental Pollution Control Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Science, Beijing 100012, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 3, 1-13

Abstract: Agricultural wastes used as denitrification carbon sources have some drawbacks such as excessive organic carbon release and unclear release characteristics of nitrogen, phosphorus, and chromatic substances, which can cause adverse effects on the effluent quality during the denitrification process. The composition and surface characteristics, carbon release mechanisms, and secondary pollutant release properties of six kinds of agricultural wastes, i.e., rice straw (RS), wheat straw (WS), corn stalk (CS), corncob (CC), soybean stalk (SS), and soybean hull (SH) were studied and analyzed in this research. The denitrification performance of these agricultural wastes was also investigated extensively by batch experiments. The results showed that the carbon release basically followed the second-order reaction kinetic equation and Ritger–Peppas equation in the 120 h reaction, and it was mainly controlled by the diffusion process. The kinetic equation fitting results and bioavailability test suggested that the potential risk of excessive effluent COD of CC was the lowest due to the appropriate amount and degradability of its released carbon. The NH 4 + -N, TN, and TP in the leachate of RS were higher than those of the other five agriculture wastes, and the chroma in the leachate of WS and CS was heavier than that of the others. CC released the lowest pollutants, which resulted in slight fluctuations of effluent quality in the start-up period (1–11 d), and it had the best nitrogen removal capacity in the denitrification experiment. The average NO 3 − -N removal of CC was 5.12 mg for each batch in the stable period (11–27 d), which was higher than that of others, and less NO 2 − -N, NH 4 + -N, and COD were accumulated in the CC effluent during the whole denitrification process.

Keywords: agricultural wastes; solid carbon source; release mechanism; secondary pollutants; denitrification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/3/1232/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/3/1232/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:3:p:1232-:d:489797

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().