With increasing water shortages, many agricultural producers are looking to reclaimed water for irrigation.
This lecture discusses a study that explores the feasibility of a new process called electrodialysis-forward osmosis. The goal of the research was to recover nutrients and clean water from anaerobic digester effluent and to safely use it to help grow food crops, specifically lettuce and kale, through hydroponic production.
Impressively, the treatment achieved high nutrient recovery rates and reclaimed up to 74% of clean water. Additionally, the hybrid ED-FO process captured 76-98% of heavy metals and 83% of total organic carbon in the residual waste stream.
Both ED and FO demonstrated low-fouling potential. The economic analysis indicated that the hybrid ED-FO process is promising for scalable implementation, making it highly attractive in terms of resource recovery, waste footprint reduction, and water quality enhancement.