Ph.D. Candidate: Mr. Iswar Man Amatya
The groundwater is one of the main water sources of Kathmandu. The groundwater in Kathmandu contains as high as 117 mg/l ammonia nitrogen. The high amount of ammonia nitrogen caused bad taste, odor, consumes high amount of chlorine during disinfection and produces toxic by-products. It needs to be reduced to WHO guideline value of 1.5 mg/l in drinking water. The commonly used methods of ammonia removal in drinking water are chlorination, adsorption and ion exchange which are expensive and produce toxic by-products.
The subject of this research is to remove ammonia nitrogen in drinking water by biological means. This method is cost effective than other conventional methods and produce no adverse effects. The research will be performed in a laboratory scale reactors to remove ammonia nitrogen by nitrification and denitrification process. The locally available charcoal and over burnt brickbats will be investigated for its suitability as filter media. The data generated from the experiment will be utilized to develop ammonia removal kinetics in water. The effect of air stripping, pH and temperature variation in ammonia removal kinetics will also be studied.