An economic and environmental evaluation of the opportunities for substituting phosphorus recovered from wastewater treatment works in existing UK fertiliser markets

Limited supplies of naturally occurring phosphorus (P) resources and their decreasing purity, coupled with legislative pressure on water service companies to remove P from both their effluent and waste streams, has focused considerable attention on recycling P recovered from domestic wastewater in existing P markets. In the context of the fertiliser industry there may be a number opportunities to substitute fertilisers based on P recovered as struvtite for existing fertiliser products. An economic and environmental evaluation of such substitution opportunities suggests that providing high struvite recovery rates can be achieved in relatively simple process configurations, and recovered materials are distributed to satisfy regional demand, they may offer the most effective economic and environmental use of resources.