New phosphate removal and recovery technology
Engineering360 News Desk | December 24, 2021New technology from Clean TeQ Water is designed to assist municipalities and industrial users in removing and recycling phosphorus from wastewater.
The PHOSPHIX system applies a combination of the company's continuous ionic filtration (CIF) technology and chemical precipitation to selectively remove phosphate from water and recover a solid phosphorus product that is suitable for reuse.
Phosphate water pollution from fertilizer runoff, detergents and sewage is a major problem throughout the world, and elevated phosphate concentrations lead to eutrophication and algal blooms that can cause irreversible ecological damage. For these reasons, increasingly strict regulations are being placed on phosphate concentrations discharged to the environment worldwide.
Source: Clean TeQ Water
Recovering phosphorus from wastewater to substitute phosphorus derived from finite phosphate rock is an increasing trend, with the EU currently recycling 50% of phosphorus from sewage and countries such as Switzerland and Germany having regulations governing the recovery and recycling of phosphorus in the wastewater treatment sector.
PHOSPHIX can achieve very low effluent concentrations (<0.1 ppm) with over 99% water recovery and provides phosphate recycling into hydroxyapatite, which can be used for fertilizer production. The solution provides reduced footprints and much lower chemical consumption leading to half the operating cost when compared to commonly used precipitation systems. The cost reduction makes phosphate recycling a more economically viable solution for treating water across industries.