Recovering Valuable Phosphates: Chemical Biotechnology as a Problem Solver for the Environment

Abstract

Researchers from the HES-SO Valais/Wallis have demonstrated how to extract phosphate from sewage sludge on the laboratory scale using renewable energy sources from a microbial fuel cell. The mobilized phosphate barely contains heavy metals and can be used to produce fertilizer of marketable quality. The necessary energy comes from a sewage treatment plant and causes no additional costs.

Keywords

• Microbial fuel cell
• Phosphate recovery
• Phosphate remobilization
• Sewage sludge
• Struvite fertilizer