Project
Nutrient Recovery and High-value Fertilizer Production from Biogas Plant Wastes
This project is funded by RaEng (Royal Academy of Engineering).
Objectives
The main goal of this project is to address biogas plant sustainability and wastewater treatment challenges by adopting a nutrient recovery process from the biogas plant wastes, that will precipitate nitrogen and phosphorus in the form of struvite (magnesium ammonium phosphate, MAP), a valuable slow-releasing fertilizer. Proposed resource recovery process will not only make biogas plants economically more advantageous, but will also serve well to rural farmers as 75% of the agricultural lands in Turkey are poor in phosphorus.
Activities
Project includes experimental work along with a dynamic model. This will aim to individuate the operational settings of sustainable and cost effective treatment scenarios with maximal resources recovery, by relating the influent stream characteristics of biogas plants to the effluent stream characteristics.
Throughout the project METU carries out the following activities:
Needs assessment and literature review
Analysis of current state of biogas plants
Literature review on available models and existing UK plants
Fertilizer production process optimization which includes struvite precipitation experiment and characterization of precipitates (XRD, SEM etc.)
Teaching and training
Literature review on available models and existing UK plants
Modelling of AD process and nutrient recovery process which includes determination of important input parameters to the model, and calibration - validation of the model
Training students on modelling work
Throughout the project CU carries out the following activities:
Throughout the project GTE carries out the following activities:
Analysis of the current state of the biogas plants
Literature review and knowledge exchange on best practices from similar commercial facilities around the world
Market research on possible fertilizers including struvite
Techno-economic analyses of fertilizer production facility experiment
Contribution to the dissemination and exploitation activities (e.g. website building)
Investigating technology transfer/commercialization pathways from academia to university
Laboratory Studies
