Removal of Hormones from CAFO Water with Vegetable Oil

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) produce large volumes of manure‐containing wastewater that contains hormones at μg/L concentrations. Typically, this wastewater is treated in lagoon systems and then applied to surrounding agricultural fields. However, lagoon treatments have limited efficacy at removing hormones and field applications introduce these contaminants to the environment where they may have biological effects on aquatic biota. Current methods of removal involve expensive materials and are not scaled for individual facilities. In this study, a novel, economical removal method was investigated. At a benchtop scale, vegetable oils were examined for capacity to remove estrone from water under several mixing and ratio parameters. A meso‐scale system was then implemented to assess factors affecting the scale‐up of the system. Finally, a working prototype was built to demonstrate feasibility of this approach to remove hydrophobic contaminants from lagoon water at a CAFO facility, thereby minimizing environmental effects from their land application.