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Abstract

The discharge of phosphorus-containing wastewater to the waterbodies poses a eutrophication problem in the environment. Many research papers review the potential reactive filter beds to remove the P nutrients from wastewater but due to the rising pH of effluent water, the system is more costly, and unsustainable.
This study examines the potential capability of calcined limpet shells as reactive media to remove the P concentration from the synthetic solutions at increasing temperatures including the analysis of correlations between phosphorus and pH, and the impact of calcined temperature to determine the ideal one.
A series of six alternative column experiments were conducted to test the two variables’ phosphates concentration and pH of water at effluent in the laboratory. Further, SEM-EDX analysis was performed on the samples from each column before and after the experiment to figure out the surface and mineralogical changes.
The investigation demonstrates that calcined limpet shells have a significant potential to recover phosphorus concentrations on average close to 80%, lowering the pH below 8 and a strong correlation between pH and phosphorus is established. The highly porous and crystalline surface features were seen as increases in the calcined temperatures. The percentage of P presence was observed very small compared to Ca and O.
It is concluded that the calcined limpet shells have a great deal of phosphorus removal capability and are viable to use in reactive media filter beds. Further research is needed to test the experiment with chemical activation that could strengthen the effectiveness of the media and on a large scale using real sewage could predict more precise results for engineering applications. 

Course: Civil Engineering - MSc - C0618

Date Deposited: 2023-02-13

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14092.html