Sustainable fertilizer reclaimed from waste: The mighty P with the Lovely Struvite

    PUYALLUP, Wash. – Phosphorus recycled from human and animal waste for plant fertilizer could ease demand for the dwindling, increasingly expensive rock-mined element.

Scientists at Washington State University have found plants flourish with struvite, a material in waste composed of magnesium, nitrogen and phosphorus. Teamed with Multiform Harvest, a Seattle phosphorus recovery company, the researchers are fine-tuning the application and amounts of fertilizer in hopes of marketing a product and benefiting the world’s food supply.

“You can’t continue mining a finite resource forever,” said Rita Hummel, a scientist at the WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center. “But as long as we … can reclaim struvite…

See complete story…. titled

Better phosphorus source Testing sustainable fertilizer reclaimed from waste

by Rachel Webber, College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences    published Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013

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“Sewage Fed Biorefineries A Foundation for Urban Sustainability”

This a great TEDX by Kartik Chandran at TEDxColumbiaEngineering

Redefining the model for urban sewage treatment / sanitation  addressing

Waste recover-  Key Chemicals

Energy Recovery

Sustainability

From the Youtube Site

“Kartik Chandran is an Environmental Engineer. He is currently Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University, where he leads the Columbia University Biomolecular Environmental Science program and the Wastewater Treatment and Climate Change program. Under his stewardship, the research directions of biological wastewater treatment and biological nitrogen removal were established for the first time ever in the history of Columbia University. Chandran is keenly interested in developing novel models for sustainable sanitation and wastewater treatment, with a specific focus on managing the global nitrogen cycle (one of the grand challenges of the National Academy of Engineering) and linking it to the carbon cycle, the water cycle and the energy cycle. Chandran has received, among other awards, the NSF CAREER award and the Paul Busch Award. He was the recipient of a 2007 National Academies of Science Fellowship and a guest professorship at the Delft University of Technology. In 2011, Chandran began implementing a novel model for sanitation in Africa, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Water Environment Federation.”

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• Ivy League Brains Figure Out How to Make Biodegradable Plastic from Greenhouse Gases (cleantechnica.com)
• Sewage-powered hydrogen fueling station opens in CA (reviews.cnet.com)