August 2023 - Regionales Phosphor-Recycling

Statement of German Phosphorus Platform on discovered phosphate deposits in Norway

28. August 202318. September 2023

Statement of German Phosphorus Platform on discovered phosphate deposits in Norway

Various media have recently reported the discovery of huge phosphate deposits in Norway. The DPP e.V. has issued a statement on this matter.

The 2022 annual report of Norge Mining Limited announced the finding of 70 billion tons of phosphate rock.

The topic was rapidly taken up by various media, partly with the tenor that the previous import dependency of European countries, including Germany, is over. The German Phosphorus Platform (DPP) e.V. issued a statement in July, which was also taken up and discussed by the press. You can read the DPP’s statement here.

Regardless of all developments and findings still to come, the BMBF funding measure RePhoR supports the setting of the course for a sustainable recycling of existing phosphorus resources. As can be seen from the statement of DPP e.V., it is so far unclear within which period of time the occurrences could be economically degradable. Either way, however, even the reserves found are finite. Therefore, the large-scale implementation of P-recycling technologies still represents a sensible way forward.

Phosphorus recycling product struvite in a long-term test in Nettlingen near Hildesheim

8. August 202310. August 2023

Phosphorus recycling product struvite in a long-term test in Nettlingen near Hildesheim

Besichtigung des Dauerversuchs auf einem Praxisbetrieb in Nettlingen bei Hildesheim. © Elke Bloem, JKI — Tour of the permanent test on a practical farm in Nettlingen near Hildesheim. © Elke Bloem, JKI

The Julius Kühn Institute (JKI) is currently conducting field experiments with fertilisers made from the phosphorus recycling product struvite. JKI, a partner in the RePhoR collaborative project P-Net, recently invited visitors to view the permanent experiment on a practice farm in Nettlingen near Hildesheim – the magazine Beckmann Verlag GmbH & Co. KG (contractor) reported.

Overall, the long-term phosphorus (P) and magnesium fertilisation effect of struvite will be investigated over a period of nine years on the plots in Nettlingen. The aim is to enable the young plants to develop P through root activity. As the soil is already well supplied with P, only maintenance fertilisation will be applied. However, initial results show that struvite fertilisation enables the plant to extract phosphorus from the soil just as well as a water-soluble commercial fertiliser such as the widely used DAP.

The testing of the struvite fertiliser, which will be marketed under the brand name “Crystallo”, is part of the BMBF-funded research project “Establishment of a network for resource-efficient phosphorus recycling and management in the Harz and Heath region” (P-Net). The researchers are also investigating the market opportunities for struvite fertilisers. A key factor here is the packaging of the fertiliser in standardised quality. By setting up a struvite network, P-Net aims to contribute to the establishment of further developed, optimised and promising processes and measures for struvite upgrading at other locations on the national and international market.

Agrobusiness Niederrhein e. V. presents the RePhoR projects P-Net, SATELLITE and AMPHORE

3. August 20235. September 2023

Agrobusiness Niederrhein e.V. stellt die RePhoR-Projekte P-Net, SATELLITE und AMPHORE vor

In June, Agrobusiness Niederrhein e.V. hosted an event at the Emschergenossenschaft wastewater treatment plant in Dinslaken to present different ways of recycling nutrients from wastewater and to discuss the legal framework and challenges. Among the projects presented were the RePhoR joint projects P-Net, SATELLITE and AMPHORE.

At the beginning of the event, Dr. Dennis Blöhse of Emschergenossenschaft/Lippeverband (EGLV) started with a report on the wastewater industry’s perspective on nutrient recycling. The obligation to recover phosphorus, which will apply from 2029, will also affect EGLV’s plants. For this reason, EGLV is already working intensively with other water industry associations and subsidiaries, as well as with scientific institutions, on ways to implement the legal framework.

Dr. Blöhse presented, among other things, activities already completed in the European INTERREG NWE project “Phos4You” (2016-2021) as well as current activities in the project with the acronym “AMPHORE” (2020-2025), which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the funding line “Regional Phosphorus Recycling (RePhoR)”. As part of this project, a large-scale demonstration plant for phosphorus recycling will be built in Bottrop, Germany, by a newly founded company, PhosRec GmbH, and will be in operation from 2024.

SF-Soepenberg GmbH, an active project partner of P-Net and SATELLITE, has developed a proprietary process called iPhos, which extracts phosphate from water and reduces the phosphate content in the dry matter of sewage sludge to less than two percent. The first plant, which will be able to recover phosphate from the wastewater of around 5,000 inhabitants using this process, is due to go into operation this summer.

iPhos and other processes for p-recovery from wastewater produce the mineral struvite, which contains phosphorus, magnesium and nitrogen. Dr. Joachim Clemens of Soepenberg is convinced of the positive properties of struvite as a fertiliser, which is already available for agricultural use. struvite precipitates when magnesium compounds are added to wastewater. This keeps the pipes in sewage treatment plants free and at the same time produces a high-quality raw material for fertilisers.