System Dynamics Modeling of Nitrogen Removal in a Stormwater Infiltration Basin with Biosorption‐Activated Media

Abstract

Stormwater infiltration basins, one of the typical stormwater best management practices, are commonly constructed for surface water pollution control, flood mitigation, and groundwater restoration in rural or residential areas. These basins have soils with better infiltration capacity than the native soil; however, the ever-increasing contribution of nutrients to groundwater from stormwater due to urban expansion makes existing infiltration basins unable to meet groundwater quality criteria related to environmental sustainability and public health. This issue requires retrofitting current infiltration basins for flood control as well as nutrient control before the stormwater enters the groundwater. An existing stormwater infiltration basin in north-central Florida was selected, retrofitted, and monitored to identify subsurface physiochemical and biological processes during 2007-2010 to investigate nutrient control processes. This implementation in the nexus of contaminant hydrology and ecological engineering adopted amended soil layers packed with biosorption activated media (BAM; tire crumb, silt, clay, and sand) to perform nutrient removal in a partitioned forebay using a berm. This study presents an infiltration basin-nitrogen removal (IBNR) model, a system dynamics model that simulates nitrogen cycling in this BAM-based stormwater infiltration basin with respect to changing hydrologic conditions and varying dissolved nitrogen concentrations. Modeling outputs of IBNR indicate that denitrification is the biogeochemical indicator in the BAM layer that accounted for a loss of about one third of the total dissolved nitrogen mass input.

The Impact of Carbon Source as Electron Donor on Composition and Concentration of Dissolved Organic Nitrogen in Biosorption-Activated Media for Stormwater and Groundwater Co-Treatment

“…Previous studies tried to address the ecological significance of DON in various environments such as marine ,, and freshwater systems. ,, These studies revealed that DON is a structurally complex mixture of different kinds of organic molecules that are highly variable in chemical structure and composition and thus in bioavailability and ecological functioning. The inherent complexity of DON is a major barrier for understanding how different best management practices (BMPs) can change, modify, and remove DON through innovative stormwater treatment processes. − One of the promising media types, biosorption activated media (BAM), has been used in various BMPs in varying landscapes for effective nitrogen removal through biological nitrification and denitrification. ,,− However, the interaction between BAM and DON remains unclear, especially for the cotreatment of stormwater and groundwater in linear ditch (bioswale) facilities.…”

Impact of changing environmental factors and species competition on iron filings‐based green environmental media for nutrient removal in stormwater treatment

“…Moreover, the toxicity of ammonia is fatal to many aquatic creatures even in a low concentration [5]. Different kinds of green sorption media with the inclusion of recycled materials have been adopted in various best management practices for nutrient removal from stormwater runoff [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Although removal efficiency is fair, it is difficult to achieve a desirable level of removal recovery.…”