Nitrate and phosphate removal from agricultural subsurface drainage using laboratory woodchip bioreactors and recycled steel byproduct filters

• Woodchips and steel byproducts effectively removed nutrients from subsurface drainage.
• Nitrite accumulation in woodchip reactors increased with increasing flow rate and nitrate.
• The steel byproduct filter was capable of removing phosphate, nitrate and nitrite.

Woodchip bioreactors have been increasingly used as an edge-of-field treatment technology to reduce the nitrate loadings to surface waters from agricultural subsurface drainage. Recent studies have shown that subsurface drainage can also contribute substantially to the loss of phosphate from agricultural soils. The objective of this study was to investigate nitrate and phosphate removal in subsurface drainage using laboratory woodchip bioreactors and recycled steel byproduct filters. The woodchip bioreactor demonstrated average nitrate removal efficiencies of 53.5–100% and removal rates of 10.1–21.6 g N/m3/d for an influent concentration of 20 mg N/L and hydraulic retention times (HRTs) of 6–24 h. When the influent nitrate concentration increased to 50 mg N/L, the bioreactor nitrate removal efficiency and rate averaged 75% and 18.9 g N/m3/d at an HRT of 24 h. Nitrate removal by the woodchips followed zero-order kinetics with rate constants of 1.42–1.80 mg N/L/h when nitrate was non-limiting. The steel byproduct filter effectively removed phosphate in the bioreactor effluent and the total phosphate adsorption capacity was 3.70 mg P/g under continuous flow conditions. Nitrite accumulation occurred in the woodchip bioreactor and the effluent nitrite concentrations increased with decreasing HRTs and increasing influent nitrate concentrations. The steel byproduct filter efficiently reduced the level of nitrite in the bioreactor effluent. Overall, the results of this study suggest that woodchip denitrification followed by steel byproduct filtration is an effective treatment technology for nitrate and phosphate removal in subsurface drainage.

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