Waste Phosphorus Recovery and Re-Use

结晶工程和生物矿化过程的基础研究激发了创造可持续战略的新方法，以减少浪费和创造有用的产品。该提案解决了废磷的大问题，并希望通过生物启发工程过程来解决这个问题。******我们的农业生产力依赖于矿物肥料。磷(P)是重要的矿质肥料之一。目前大部分磷肥生产都有一个来源。这个来源是磷矿，它是由某些海洋细菌和古老的骨骼床在几千年的作用下产生的。作为肥料使用后，磷可以成为一种污染物，当农田的磷径流和畜牧场的粪便加速藻类生长时，会引起富营养化。该提案旨在捕获农业径流和废水中的P排放物，并创造可持续的，有用的P肥料******大多数市政当局通过在市政污水处理厂中固定P来避免污水中的P污染当地水域。这是通过加入可溶的氯化铁来实现的，这使得不溶的磷酸铁。这种不溶性磷酸铁是废水处理厂产生的生物固体的一个组成部分，这些废水处理厂要么被填埋，要么被小心地应用于一些农业领域。不幸的是，不溶性磷不能被植物吸收，这意味着我们只有一次利用磷，从开采的磷酸盐，到肥料，再到污染物。******这项工作的目标是从城市污水处理厂、奶牛综合体、啤酒厂和乳制品生产商产生的废物中回收磷，并利用我们对生物矿化过程的理解来生产一种有用的磷材料，这种材料类似于我们开采用于生产磷肥的生物矿物。这项工作的潜在化学灵感来自于研究骨骼矿物形成的起源。复杂的骨骼生物矿化问题仍未得到解决；继续研究生物如何产生有用的磷矿物可能会产生新的工程策略来捕获和再利用废磷酸盐

The fundamental studies of crystallization engineering and biomineralization processes inspire new approaches to creating sustainable strategies to reduce waste and create useful products. This proposal addresses the large problem of waste phosphorus, and aspires to address it with bio-inspired engineering processes. ******Our agricultural productivity is reliant on mineral fertilizer. Phosphorus (P) is one of the important mineral fertilizers. There is currently one source for the majority of P-fertilizer production. This source is phosphate rock, which is produced over millennia by the action of certain marine bacteria, and ancient skeletal beds. After use as a fertilizer, P can become a pollutant, causing eutrophication when P-runoff from agricultural fields and manure from livestock farms accelerates algal growth. This proposal seeks to capture P effluents in agricultural run-off and wastewater, and to create sustainable, useful P-fertilizer******Most municipalities avoid contaminating local waters with P from sewer wastewater by fixing P in municipal wastewater treatment plants. This is accomplished by adding soluble iron chloride, which makes insoluble iron phosphate. This insoluble iron phosphate is a component of the biosolids produced by wastewater treatment plants that are either landfilled or carefully applied to some agricultural fields. Unfortunately the insoluble P is not taken up by plants, which means that we have a one-pass use of P, from mined phosphate, to fertilizer, to a pollutant.******The goal of this work is to recover P from waste produced by municipal wastewater treatment plants, dairy cattle complexes, breweries, and dairy producers, and use our understanding of biomineralization processes to produce a useful P-material that is similar to the biomineral that we mine to produce P-fertilizer. The inspiration for the underlying chemistry for this work arose from studying the genesis of skeletal mineral formation. The complex skeletal biomineralization problem is still unsolved; continued investigation of how biology creates useful phosphate minerals may generate new engineering strategies for waste phosphate capture and re-use.**