29 08 2020

Five waterboards in North Rhine-Westphalia join forces for P recovery from sewage sludge ashes

Some of the issues dealt with in Phos4You will be further pursued in a national funding project. The water boards Ruhrverband (Lead Partner), Emschergenossenschaft, Lippeverband, Wupperverband and Linksniederrheinische  Entwässerungs-Genossenschaft have joined forces to develop a regional effective phosphorus recycling.

In the project AMPHORE, they will work on the complete value chain of phosphorus recycling as being integral part of the future sewage sludge management. The joint project is supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the funding measure “Regional Phosphorus Recycling” (RePhoR)”. RePhoR is part of the BMBF framework programme “Research for Sustainable Development” (FONA3)”. a first phase running until June 2022 has been just been approved on 12th June 2020 (planning phase); a second project phase will run until 2025 (implementation phase).

As core body of the project a new enterprise has been founded by the 5 water boards: The PhosRec GmbH has the task to plan, build and run a full-scale P recovery demonstration plant located at the wastewater treatment plant of the Emschergenossenschaft in Bottrop, Germany. Further involved project partners are Emscher Wassertechnik GmbH, WiW mbH Wuppertal, RWTH Aachen University, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI and IFEU Heidelberg.

The technology will be a wet chemical P recovery from sewage sludge ashes of the involved water boards. Aimed dimension of the plant is a performance of 1.000 t Ashes/a (in continuous operation).

Within Phos4You different wet chemical processes have been investigated. These results are a valuable source of information within the selection process for the most suitable technology to be demonstrated in AMPHORE. Running until 2021, Phos4You will deliver further results to support the process decision and make best use of synergies between the projects.

The intended product is phosphoric acid. Besides the recycling of this product also the by-products will be in the focus: quality and possible recycling options for resulting silicate residues, gypsum or metal concentrates shall enable efficient recycling and disposal reliability.

Read more about AMPHORE: https://www.ruhrverband.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/detailansicht/news///wasserverbaende-erhalten-foerderzusage-fuer-projekt-zur-phosphorrueckgewinnung/

Read more about Phos4You: www.nweurope.eu/phos4you

Location of the future AMPHORE P recovery plant: wastewater treatment plant of Emschergenossenschaft in Bottrop; source: Emschergenossenschaft

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