Why recover phosphorus?

  • Essential to life.
  • Component of bones, teeth, DNA and RNA.
  • Plays a critical role in plant growth and food supply
    • One of the main components of fertilizers
  • Its consumption increases globally.
  • P is produced from phosphate rock, which is a finite resource.
  • Phosphate rock is in EU’s List for Critical Raw Materials (EC, 2014).
  • P recovery is a priority in the wastewater sector - about 17% of all mined mineral P ends up in human excreta (Kehrein et al., 2020)
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