Reimagining wastewater phosphorus removal and recovery

Water utilities face continual tightening of regulations for the discharge of phosphorus. In this white paper, our experts discuss new technologies for the removal and recovery of phosphorus from WwTPs as well as opportunities for collaborative catchment level solutions to improve water quality.
Fertilizing the plant with phosphorus fertilizer

Mineral phosphorus used in fertilisers, is a finite resource that is essential for food production.

However, inefficient fertiliser use, run-off from livestock and discharges from wastewater treatment works all lead to elevated phosphate concentrations entering rivers and streams. This can cause large algal blooms to form, damaging the delicate ecosystems of these waterways and posing a risk to human health.

Regulators are setting increasingly strict limits on the allowed concentration of phosphorus in municipal wastewater treatment plant discharges, in order to protect water quality. The water companies can play a key role in the phosphorus-cycle by not just removing the phosphorus to meet these limits but by creating resource recovery facilities to capture the phosphorus as a valuable product for beneficial re-use. The key challenge is to be able to implement reliable and sustainable technology that can meet regulatory limits and support a circular economy, without excessive cost or reliance on other resources (ie. chemical, energy) to meet these outcomes.

Alongside these technological advances, it is important to engage outside the sector to support catchment wide initiatives.  These holistic approaches offer multiple benefits including tackling other diffuse sources of phosphorus entering watercourses, reducing the financial burden on the water companies and delivering regenerative schemes using nature based solutions to deliver a range of improved environmental outcomes.

So, how do we develop a framework that helps us to support catchment wide initiatives and optimise technological interventions to upgrade wastewater treatment plants (WwTPs).  How can we improve phosphorus removal from WwTPs in the most sustainable way and more importantly, how can we recover phosphorus to develop new sustainable products?

Our water experts discuss emerging practices and technologies and how these can help us meet current challenges whilst closing the loop in the phosphorus cycle.

In this white paper, you’ll discover:

  • What challenges society faces in using phosphorus – a limited mineral resource
  • How the water industry can implement catchment-based approaches that work alongside nature
  • Why more effective phosphorus removal from wastewater is becoming essential
  • Which treatment technologies can be used to recover and valorise phosphorus
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White paper

Reimagining wastewater phosphorus removal and recovery

Learn more about the technologies wastewater treatment plants can use to remove phosphorus and recover it as a valuable resource.
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The cover of the white paper called Reimagining wastewater phosphorus removal and recovery offered by Royal HaskoningDHV
Paul Lavender

To close the phosphorus cycle, solutions must enable the removed phosphorus to be recovered in a form where it can be valorised in new market opportunities – and where there is a strong business case.

Paul LavenderDirector Water Utilities, UK
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