H14E-02
Blind Inlet as a Possible Technology for the Remediation of Phosphorus from Surface Runoff
Monday, 14 December 2015: 16:15
3024 (Moscone West)
Martin Sturmlechner1, Xiyuan Wu2, Stanley Livingston3, Andreas Klik1 and Chi-Hua Huang4, (1)BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Institute of Hydraulics and Rural Water Management, Vienna, Austria, (2)Linyi University, Insitute of Water and Soil Conservation and Environmental Protection, Linyi, China, (3)USDA, ARS, National Soil Erorion Research Lab, West Lafayette, IN, United States, (4)USDA ARS, National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory, West Lafayette, IN, United States
Abstract:
Phosphorus (P) is an essential element for plant life, but too much P in runoff water can cause eutrophication and harmful algal blooms. Hence, mitigation of agricultural P losses into the water cycle is a very important issue. In–stream P treatment is difficult to implement because the large amount of storm runoff needs to be treated in short durations. In this research, we evaluated the potential to use blind inlet as an in-field P treatment technology. A box system was built to simulate hydrological and chemical processes occurring in a blind inlet. Current blind inlets, which are already installed in the field, use a bed of limestone with a sand/pea gravel layer on the top. In this study, steel slags has been tested, which has a very high P sorption potential, as the filter media through a series of adsorption and desorption experiments. The P mass balance results are compared with the limestone material used in current blind inlet construction. The total mass of P which was absorbed by the limestone was 14 % of the P input into the system whereas 26 % P was absorbed by the steel slags. Therefore the steel slags show potential to sequester dissolved P. Additional research is on-going to come up with a design criteria for field implementation.
