pH Effect on Phosphorus Removal in Synthetic Wastewater by Using Electric Arc Furnace Lab-Scale Filter

Abstract

Phosphorus is a non-renewable source and due to its high levels of phosphorus in water body may lead to eutrophication problems. It may come from many sources such as industry, agriculture and also from wastewater treatment plant. Large excessive of phosphorus may increase the purification cost and serious water quality problem because of the effect of algae toxin in water. Conventional wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) requires lot of cost such as labour, capital and maintenance costs. Therefore, the lab-scale aerated steel slag filter (ASSF) emerged as an alternative method to remove phosphorus from water due to its simple and also low cost technology has been developed to overcome this problem. This lab-scale filter has been conducted by using synthetic wastewater for an eight weeks starting from 19 March until 4 th May 2014. This study is to investigate the effect of pH range from 4.5 to 7.5 and temperature for phosphorus removal mechanism. From this study, result shows that lab-scale ASSF achieve about 90% of phosphorus removal at pH 5.0. Based on X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis, the steel slag is rich in Ca, Al and Fe which is enhance the P removal with the influence of pH for precipitation mechanism process in this experiment.