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:
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