Ammonia removal from saline wastewater by ion exchange

Ion exchange materials that are highly selective for ammonia have been used for wastewater treatment but in the main they are only suitable for use in non-saline water. In the research described in this paper some new materials have been evaluated for the selective uptake of ammonia from saline wastewater. Those materials include: MN 500 (belongs to the group of material known as Macronets which are hypercrosslinked polyvinyl styrenes) as well as some chemically modified zeolites. Equilibrium isotherms for ammonium ion uptake determined in a series of shake flask experiments using exchangers exposed to varying concentrations of ammonium ion in artificial seawater are shown. Capacity and selectivity data for these materials for ammonium ion are also presented.