Solar-driven efficient and selective ammonia recovery from ammonium-containing wastewater

Qi Zhang, Tianqi Wei, Minfei Fei, Xiaojun Wang, Ningning Cao, Haowen Chi, Hongzhi Zheng, Xueyang Zhao, Ning Xu () and Jia Zhu ()
Additional contact information
Qi Zhang: Nanjing University
Tianqi Wei: Nanjing University
Minfei Fei: Nanjing University
Xiaojun Wang: Nanjing University
Ningning Cao: Nanjing University
Haowen Chi: Nanjing University
Hongzhi Zheng: Nanjing University
Xueyang Zhao: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Ning Xu: Nanjing University
Jia Zhu: Nanjing University

Nature Sustainability, 2025, vol. 8, issue 9, 1058-1067

Abstract: Abstract Recovering ammonia (NH3) from ammonium (NH4+)-containing wastewater simultaneously achieves resource recovery and wastewater treatment. Given that NH3 recovery involves a reversible NH4+ hydrolysis reaction, traditional strategy requires alkaline reactants for promoting the reaction forward and energy-intensive heating for recovering NH3, resulting in substantial cost and energy consumption. Here we propose a solar-driven NH3 recovery strategy enabled by floatable amino-grafted (‒NH2) MXene (Ti3C2)-based sponge that possesses local alkaline environment and interfacial heat on water surface. Both H+ trapping via ‒NH2 groups and NH3 evaporating via interfacial solar heating thermodynamically facilitate efficient and sustainable NH3 recovery. Taking ammonia chloride (NH4Cl) wastewater for example, a NH3 recovery rate of 0.6 mol m−2 h−1 with a purity of 99.8% is obtained under 5 sun without extra reagents and energy consumption, and the recovered NH3 can be directly used as nitrogen fertilizer. Besides, the amino-grafted MXene-based sponge is also capable of being fully regenerated to its initial performance under 15 sun, and hydrochloric acid, a valuable by-product, can be obtained during this process. Life-cycle and techno-economic assessments highlight the advantages of solar-driven NH3 recovery in terms of environmental benefits and economic potential.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01609-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nat:natsus:v:8:y:2025:i:9:d:10.1038_s41893-025-01609-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-025-01609-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().