Technical and scientific monitoring of the large-scale seaborne technology at the WWTP Gifhorn

Abstract

The Seaborne process separates nutrients from the sewage sludge and produces a high quality fertilizer without heavy metals or organic pollutants. A first large-scale pilot plant with a modified Seaborne Technology was built on the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) of Gifhorn in Germany. The plant was established in the year 2005 and the start-of-operation phase is being monitored technically and scientifically. The priority objective of the technical and scientific monitoring is to determine the efficiency of the process. This includes monitoring of resource consumption as well as the quality and quantity of the produced fertilizer. Furthermore the influence of this technology on the operation of the WWTP will be investigated. Another question to be answered is the profitability of the recycling process and a possible transferability to other WWTPs. Mass balances of nutrient and pollutant streams established before start-of-operation will be used as reference values for comparing future results. In addition, organic and inorganic pollutant concentrations in the digested sludge were determined before the sludge was fed to the Seaborne process. The obtained reference values will then be compared with the measuring results obtained under operation of the Seaborne process. Thus load redistribution in the material flows of the WWTP will be determined. Since so far, no stable operation of the large-scale Seaborne Technology has been achieved, it has not been possible to carry out the measuring programme. Therefore reference values for nutrient streams obtained from the primary mass balances, were used to calculate expected mass balances after implementing the Seaborne Technology to the WWTP, in order to be able to estimate possible future load redistribution in the material flows of the WWTP.

Phosphorus recovery as struvite from farm, municipal and industrial waste: Feedstock suitability, methods and pre-treatments

“…A problem with separating the metals was reported by Müller et al (2007) because of the colloidal size of the heavy metal sulphides. Whilst the average concentration of heavy metals in samples of thickened sludge was below German legal requirements during tests (Günther et al, 2008), this may not be the case in other scenarios, either in terms of location or treated waste. The Gifhorn site produces 270 kg struvite per day but is capable of producing more (P-Rex, Gifhorn Technical Factsheet, 2015, www.p-rex.eu).…”

Global Phosphorus Scarcity and Full-Scale P-Recovery Techniques: A Review

“…The products of the Seaborne process struvite and ammonium sulphate, can be reused as fertilizer in agriculture (Günther et al, 2008). A first full scale pilot plant was built between 2005 and 2006 at the wastewater treatment plant Gifhorn, (50,000 PE) in lower Saxony (Germany).…”

Effectiveness of recycled P products as P fertilizers, as evaluated in pot experiments

“…In Germany, several processes have been tested to recover P from sewage sludge. Among the more important processes are the precipitation of P as magnesium-ammonium-phosphate (MgNH 4 PO 4 Á6H 2 O, MAP or struvite) (Günther et al 2008;Phan et al 2009) and calcium-phosphate (Ca-P) (Ehbrecht et al 2009). Furthermore, P recovery can be achieved by thermo-chemical processes, such as incineration, sintering or smelting sewage sludge or animal wastes (Adam et al 2009b;Scheidig et al 2009).…”