Final Report Summary - RECOPHOS (Recovery of Phosphorus from Sewage Sludge and Sewage Sludge Ashes with the thermo-reductive RecoPhos-Process)
Executive Summary:
Phosphorus is a key plant nutrient and an indispensable raw material for the fertilizer as well as the chemical industry. But natural mineral phosphate sources are getting scarce and will aggravate the situation for Europe`s dependence on phosphorus imports. This and also the fact that phosphate mining and refining has severe side effects on environment will make the recycling of phosphorus from every suitable phosphorus-containing waste inevitable in the near future. The tapping of new sources of phosphorus is therefore imperative for European economy as a whole.
Sewage sludge is considered a viable alternative to phosphate rock as it contains large quan-tities of phosphorus in high concentrations. The RecoPhos project aimed to recover that val-uable resource directly from sewage sludge ash using a highly efficient process and thus con-tributes to closing the phosphorus cycle.
European universities, small and medium-sized enterprises and multi-national industry have joined forces in the RecoPhos consortium to develop a sustainable and highly efficient process for recovering phosphorus from sewage sludge ash.
Phosphorus recovery: RecoPhos is a thermo-chemical process involving the fractioned ex-traction of phosphate and heavy metals from sewage sludge ash at high temperatures under reducing conditions. The chemical principle of the core reaction is modelled on the “Wöhler process”, in which phosphates react with carbon and silicon dioxide in a furnace and is re-duced to phosphorus. The RecoPhos process follows a novel approach by using the innova-tive InduCarb retort, where a coke bed is heated inductively, and the reduction of the phos-phorus contained in the sewage sludge ash takes place in a thin melt film on the surface of the coke particles. The reduced phosphorus can evaporate from the film without significantly reacting with other elements and can subsequently be retrieved either as white phosphorus or oxidised into phosphoric acid.
Project Context and Objectives:
In connection with the RecoPhos process a fully operational continuous bench scale plant/small pilot plant was designed and constructed. That comprised the planning and basic engineering of the reactors as well as of periphery like frequency converters, off-gas cleaning and automation technology.
The design of the RecoPhos process itself as well as of a future semi-industrial pilot plant was constantly enhanced according to the experimental results.
The RecoPhos process was developed by using a complementary approach combining mathematical modelling and experimental investigations at laboratory scale. Additionally the bench scale plant/small pilot plant developed within the RecoPhos project allowed the variation of key process parameters such as temperature, ash composition, residence times or addi-tives in order to gain a profound insight into the process behaviour.
The thermodynamic and chemical processes taking place within the reactor were investigated using state-of-the-art modelling and simulation methods. These combined results provided the basis for the before mentioned design of a semi-industrial pilot plant which are planned to be built after the end of the RecoPhos project.
The technological investigations were complemented by a market study and a Life Cycle As-sessment to evaluate the environmental and economic impact of the RecoPhos process.
Project Results:
RecoPhos aimed in a multidisciplinary way to ensure the optimal research outcome and commercial exploitation of its results by mobilising the critical mass of scientific knowledge as well as eco-environmental application skills. The members of RecoPhos represented the required expertise from various research areas in order to achieve a real-breakthrough of an urgently needed successful phosphorus recovery process.
Most of that expertise was already based on previous national & international projects & initiatives, in which some of the project partners participated (e.g. URIOM – Upgrading and utilisation of residual iron oxide materials for hot metal production; FORWAST - Mapping of physical flows and stocks of resources to forecast waste quantities in Europe regarding waste prevention and recycling; …..)
The RecoPhos project presented a completely new approach to recover phosphorus from sewage sludge ash. Novel and absolutely innovative technologies from the research point of view within RecoPhos were:
- The use of a reacting fixed bed to extract phosphorus from different P-matrices resulted in new chemical and thermodynamic processes. In the RecoPhos project, these were investigated practically and theoretically for the first time.
- The modular system of the InduCarb offered new possibilities to investigate the separation of gaseous products of thermo-chemical reactions.
- The pre-treatment of the sludge / sludge ash in an extra purifying step is another aspect that was theoretically considered in the RecoPhos project.
- The understanding of the processes taking place in the RecoPhos-reactors opened new insights in thermo-chemical process engineering, which will now be used to initiate further research on that field.
- The description of the high-temperature chemistry of P-containing systems will be improved.
- The ecological assessment of the RecoPhos process on the basis of the results of the RecoPhos project, compared with other phosphate processing techniques increased the knowledge about resources management, and the future phosphorus economy in particular.
However, RecoPhos can be seen as a commercially driven project. This commercial perspective of the project is an important measure for the successful exploitation and the implementation of an environmental friendly solution on a European and global level.
Potential Impact:
IMPACT
Strategic Impact
Cross-European development, multidisciplinary working teams (chemical engineers, safety & environmental experts, etc.) and integration of different eco-efficient environmental technologies strongly depends on the ability to cope with the inherent complexity of technologies and environments in order to boost organisational, national, international as well as individual performance and productivity.
Phosphorus recovery from sewage sludge is one major goal of European environmental policy. However, only little of the European sewage sludge can be processed to phosphorus or its products due to still unsolved severe technical problems.
As the respective state of the art can still only solve a small part of the problem of valuable phosphorus being wasted by inappropriate disposal, RecoPhos with its maximum yield of phosphorus and minimum amount of waste could close a big gap in the market of phosphorus recycling. With the help of RecoPhos and accompanied by necessary changes in the European sludge management strategy, a big share of the P-consumption in Europe could be covered by secondary resources in a longer term.
The RecoPhos project aimed to contribute to the general European strategy of a) preventing waste; b) minimising waste and c) if possible re-using it as a new raw material. Beside that the business area environmental technologies is one of the fast growing economic sectors in Europe and quite important for the pioneering role of Europe in relation with an environmental-friendly policy.
The new RecoPhos phosphorus recovery process has a fundamental impact on:
a) sustainable management of the limited resource phosphorus, which is essential for all life processes;
b) higher resource efficiency through a recovery process and related decrease of EU dependency on resource imports;
c) lower environmental impact e.g. by slowing down the environmentally critical phosphate mining and refining;
d) more competitiveness of all participating companies/organisations;
e) new eco-efficient environmental technologies.
However, the state of the art on environmental technologies in Europe is rather different and the legal and organisational requirements are varying in the different national environments. In this context the project RecoPhos contributed to the development of new standardised technologies & processes that enables the solution to a specific environmental problem at least on a European level.
The consortium features major participation of SMEs as experts for
– process development;
– basic and detail engineering;
– process modelling and simulation;
– safety and environmental assessment;
– special plant construction.
These RecoPhos work fields required a high degree of flexibility, innovation and expertise, properties that were provided by the SME partners of the RecoPhos Consortium.
The know-how gained in the project and the new contacts will open new fields of action and collaboration between the SME partners and the participating corporation and other large firms.
The participation of a large company grants best chances to bring RecoPhos to an industrial success due to its deep know how, profound knowledge of the market, as well as widely spread contacts to other companies and authorities.
Impact on Society & Environmental Impact
The development of a new thermo-chemical process for the recovery of phosphorus (from sewage sludge and sewage sludge ashes) contributes to the prevention of a number of environmental problems/risks, which otherwise might be quite costly and hazardous to health for the European Society in the long run. These are illustrated in the following examples and data:
a) The potential of phosphorus to be recovered from European (EU15) sewage sludge can be estimated to roughly 20% of the European (EU15) phosphorus consumption4; considering future enhancements of wastewater and sludge treatment in countries currently lacking appropriate technology, this fraction can be much higher: In Germany up to 50% , in Switzerland around 80% of their net rock phosphate import ,4 could be sourced already from sludge.
b) One ton of calcium-silicate slag used as binder in the cement industry can save the emission of 400 kg of emission of fossil CO2.
c) The direct use of sewage sludge as fertiliser can be reduced. This will also reduce the distribution of heavy metals and organic pollutants to soils and further on to the food chain.
d) The new RecoPhos process will have a positive impact on the general environmental performance, reducing pollution and land use by traditional phosphate mining – to use sewage sludge ash is virtually a form of “urban mining”.
e) By the use of industrial wastes as additives, the waste amount of other industrial sectors can be reduced. At the same time, the disposal of sewage sludge or ash respectively as solid waste is not necessary, reducing land use and potential pollution even further.
f) The exploitation of the finite resource phosphorus is slowed down, thus minimising land use, environmental pollution and social problems by mining activities, but still allowing economic growth. The use of the other outputs (Fe-alloy, HM-dust) in the metal industry will also reduce resource depletion.
g) By the use of sludge ash as secondary resource, the CO2-emissions caused by mining and refining of natural phosphates can be saved. By the use of the RecoPhos end slag, the decarbonatation of limestone in cement kilns can be avoided, which is responsible for large CO2 emissions.
h) The thermo-chemical process within RecoPhos can be seen as an instrument for intelligent waste management, because it converts problematic waste into the valuable raw material white phosphorus, as well as other usable products. Thus the actual waste amount will be reduced to almost 0% of the educt.
i) The two step RecoPhos process will use mostly alternative / renewable energy sources (wastes) and a minimum of fossil energy (~ 10% of total energy input), and also produce a minimal amount of waste (< 1% of input) by transforming almost all sludge ash ingredients to valuable products.
j) Accompanying all environmental and safety aspects were continually monitored in order to guarantee that the life cycle of the RecoPhos solution is not having any negative effects on the environment or the human health.
Dissemination and/or exploitation of project results, and management of intellectual property
The RecoPhos Consortium considered dissemination and exploitation as extremely important activities. The project maintained a particular document called “Dissemination and Exploitation Plan”, which got an officially submitted update once a year.
For achieving the impacts described above the Consortium had a clear and actively managed dissemination and exploitation plan which contained the following key elements:
- Presentations, publication and publicity, including press releases;
- Presentations at academic conferences and in academic journals;
- Market Strategy.
Dissemination during and after the project
As already mentioned a combined dissemination & exploitation plan was designed to spread excellence.
The target audience (beyond the research community) was seen as follows:
- Professionals in the environmental area;
- Policy decision makers at different levels of political activity;
- Phosphorus/phosphoric acid consumers (=> they should opt for recycled phosphorus);
- Citizens.
Therefore a number of dissemination mechanisms which address the different target segments were established within the RecoPhos project.
a) Press releases: The aim was to attract interest and raise awareness on the project through well written and targeted press releases.
b) Project video: A 5-minutes video was produced in order to present the RecoPhos project to the general public (available on the project website).
c) RecoPhos public web page: RecoPhos maintains a public web page which contains comprehensive information on the project and its results.
d) Customised flyers dedicated to various target audiences.
• Exhibitions: The participation within exhibitions such as IFAT, Achema etc. will enable that the project results can be introduced to a wider general and professional audience.
• Organisation of and participation in industry workshops and conferences.
Exploitation plans of the RecoPhos Consortium:
The handling of the IPR issues and the management of knowledge follows the general guidelines and processes detailed in the RecoPhos Consortium Agreement.
That means that the following general confidentiality and IPR rules within EC funded projects were applied:
• Confidentiality is maintained for all information gained from partners through deliverables or by other means while carrying out the project, if this information is not already in the public domain.
• If any of the partners wanted to publish partial or final results they seeked prior clearance from the other partners (procedure defined in Consortium Agreement).
• The partners included in the Consortium Agreement a list of the existing background IPR that they are brought to the project as a basis for their RTD and which remained their property.
• They clearly identified those items that are freely available to partners for access and/or for use; and those that are subject to commercial restrictions or payment of licence fees. On the other hand they specified what was specifically excluded from the project.
• Researchers had the right to publish research results, subject to the terms of the Consortium Agreement.
• Any foreground knowledge created and protected by one partner was made equally available to all other partners of the project at preferential licensing terms (as compared to terms offered to the market).
However, the Consortium structure was fixed in a way that from the proposal phase on, that it was already clear who is developing what kind of results and who was responsible for the final exploitation of the particular project results.
Market strategy and related commercial exploitation plans:
Marketing strategy and related exploitation plans were developed upon the assumption that social and environmental requirements (including legal requirements) as well as limited natural phosphorous resources are putting more pressure than ever before on national & European authorities that phosphorus is going to be recycled.
As the RecoPhos process has the huge potential to successfully recover phosphorous it is assumed that the new RecoPhos process will rapidly fold over from the planned bench scale unit to a semi-industrial pilot approach following a commercial mainstream application within the next few years. In this connection it is intended that SGL Carbon GmbH will act as the main exploitation partner whereas all the other RecoPhos partners will get a share of the profit if the RecoPhos process can be exploited successfully. Besides that SGL holds already the corresponding patents (Flash, InduCarb and RecoDust), which are required for the exploitation of the RecoPhos process.
Please find below the individual exploitation plans of all RecoPhos project partners.
SGL CARBON GMBH (SGL)
SGL CARBON GmbH is the main exploitation partner within the RecoPhos Consortium and has, as worldwide and European market leader of carbon and graphite products the market power to exploit the RecoPhos project results. In addition to the 2 base patents (Recodust and Inducarb) access for development purposes, SGL has decided to play the role of the main exploitation partner of this new technology. It is SGL`s intent to promote this new technology throughout various waste water sewage sludge markets to help them solving an ever growing environmental burden while developing a new raw material stream for the production of White Phosphorus. SGL has proven in the recent past that his internal access to the latest technologies/know-how in high temperature material/applications in conjunction with special anti-corrosive properties through its Technology and Innovation department would make him a preferred partner to roll-out commercially such innovative process. At this moment, SGL is currently assessing the market dimension to better fit the process dimension to optimize its profitability. A team will be soon created internally to define, while utilizing Six Sigma methodologies, adapted to “process commercialization”, the milestone roadmap to properly render this exciting project. With the involvement of the project partners, which also have specific expertise, SGL can count on a solid base of know-how and manpower to encounter the various hurdles that may arose. Financially, SGL has access to funding partners which will be interested in sharing the risk around erecting a properly sized industrial pilot plant after a successfully finished project RecoPhos.
Montanuniversität Leoben (MUL)
MUL as an academic institution is well known for its excellent research performance in the environmental area and its related applications. MUL intends to exploit the RecoPhos results in two ways. Firstly, the results which are part of MUL research will be integrated into the RecoPhos framework and exploited together with the other RecoPhos Consortium`s partners. Secondly, RecoPhos project results will play an important part within all ongoing and future research projects which relate to environmental technologies.
This means that one important aim of MUL is to contribute with its particular research work in RecoPhos to closer industry-related research cooperation in the environmental area.
Another important goal will be that the developed project results are used in context with student education at Montanuniversität Leoben.
Beside that several high quality conference presentations and publications in international scientific journals was prepared during the project duration.
University of Stuttgart (USTUTT)
USTUTT is represented in this project by their Institute for Sanitary Engineering, Water Quality and Solid Waste Management (ISWA), which has been dealing with the environmentally friendly treatment and disposal of sewage sludge for decades. Hence the recovery of Phosphorus has been in the focus of their work for over 10 years now. RecoPhos added a new dimension to the expertise of the ISWA in that topic, offering the opportunity to widen their field of research by new insights into thermo-chemical process engineering and resources management, and mainly also by the contacts to possible new research partners.
The gained know-how can be transferred to future research projects, and it will also serve to keep the lectures (e.g. Sludge Treatment, Resources Management, Chemistry of Waste) up to date.
USTUTT published parts of their work in reviewed journals and on international conferences.
M.A.L. Metallbau Anlagenservice – Leitungsbau Gesellschaft m.b.H. (MAL)
MAL is very specialized SME regarding the manufacturing of burners and reactors for high temperature processes in several industrial sectors such as metallurgy, cement industry and glass industry. Therefore MAL enhanced its already high experience in the field of design, digital prototyping and manufacturing of bench scale plants/pilot plants. MAL is also aiming to be a partner by the upscaling and erection of the operational industrial plant after the end of the RecoPhos project.
INERCO, Ingeniería, Tecnología y Consultoría, S.A. (INER)
INERCO is an engineering company that is recently developing activities in the field of the waste management and is interested in being involved in the exploitation of this type of technology.
INERCO has been authorized since 2008 by the environmental authority of Andalusia (Regional Government in Spain) for the management of dangerous wastes.
This permit allows INERCO to developing some waste management operations, and in particular related with contaminated soils remediation.
The framework waste legislation in Europe indicates that Member States shall take appropriate measures to encourage, first, the prevention or reduction of waste production and its harmfulness. And second, the recovery of waste by means of recycling, reuse or reclamation or any other process with a view to extracting secondary raw materials; or the use of waste as a source of energy.
Considering the mentioned above, if finally this RecoPhos project becomes an available (technical and economically) technology that helps to use sewage sludge and sludge ash without the actual problems, INERCO itself or with other partners would play the role of waste manager, agent or another necessary figure to get moving a real market of any way of use total or partially the sludges or recovered products.
InsPyro N.V.
InsPyro is consulting company for high temperature materials processing companies. Using the results of the RecoPhos project, InsPyro:
- improves its process development competence;
- improves the chemical databases used for modelling;
- continues to provide access to these competences through consulting, software and databases to small to large size materials treatment companies and recyclers;
- is able to also target waste treatment companies; and to
- use the project as a reference.
Hariri Chemical Process Engineering (H-CPE)
H-CPE will provide its extended professional know-how, within Process, Process Automation and control as well as Plant Safety to members, aiming the set-up of a process plant using the RecoPhos process on an industrial scale.
H-CPE intends to exploit the RecoPhos results as follows:
- The results which are part of H-CPE development shall be integrated into the RecoPhos framework and exploited together with the other RecoPhos Consortium`s partners.
- RecoPhos project results as well as developed methods and software will be used for industrial scale up and process plant design.
M.I.T. (Metallurgy & Inorganic Technology) (MIT)
MIT is a high-innovative consulting and engineering company which is intending to exploit its knowledge on “High Tec” inductive heating systems and processes (InduCarb and similar) including its capability of design & concept studies. Beside that MIT will enhance its own consulting service portfolio. Additionally MIT participates in the common exploitation activities of the RecoPhos process after the end of the project.
Gesellschaft für Chemischen und Technischen Umweltschutz mbH (GCTU)
GCTU intends to use its new knowledge and contacts to operate as consulting and planning company with respect to sustainable resource recovery especially in connection with future large-scale P-recycling projects in Europe and abroad.
The RecoPhos project results ensures GCTU an advantage in an unique thermal recycling technique. GTCU’s vision is to integrate technically simplified RecoPhos plants at any sewage sludge treatment plant resp. at any sewage sludge incinerator, worldwide, in order to produce both, a pure phosphoric acid, resp. a pure phosphate, and a useable slag e.g. for the cement industry. Thus, sewage sludge will be no longer a problematic waste but a completely utilisable (zero waste) raw material.
List of Websites:
www.recophos.org
Phosphorus is a key plant nutrient and an indispensable raw material for the fertilizer as well as the chemical industry. But natural mineral phosphate sources are getting scarce and will aggravate the situation for Europe`s dependence on phosphorus imports. This and also the fact that phosphate mining and refining has severe side effects on environment will make the recycling of phosphorus from every suitable phosphorus-containing waste inevitable in the near future. The tapping of new sources of phosphorus is therefore imperative for European economy as a whole.
Sewage sludge is considered a viable alternative to phosphate rock as it contains large quan-tities of phosphorus in high concentrations. The RecoPhos project aimed to recover that val-uable resource directly from sewage sludge ash using a highly efficient process and thus con-tributes to closing the phosphorus cycle.
European universities, small and medium-sized enterprises and multi-national industry have joined forces in the RecoPhos consortium to develop a sustainable and highly efficient process for recovering phosphorus from sewage sludge ash.
Phosphorus recovery: RecoPhos is a thermo-chemical process involving the fractioned ex-traction of phosphate and heavy metals from sewage sludge ash at high temperatures under reducing conditions. The chemical principle of the core reaction is modelled on the “Wöhler process”, in which phosphates react with carbon and silicon dioxide in a furnace and is re-duced to phosphorus. The RecoPhos process follows a novel approach by using the innova-tive InduCarb retort, where a coke bed is heated inductively, and the reduction of the phos-phorus contained in the sewage sludge ash takes place in a thin melt film on the surface of the coke particles. The reduced phosphorus can evaporate from the film without significantly reacting with other elements and can subsequently be retrieved either as white phosphorus or oxidised into phosphoric acid.
Project Context and Objectives:
In connection with the RecoPhos process a fully operational continuous bench scale plant/small pilot plant was designed and constructed. That comprised the planning and basic engineering of the reactors as well as of periphery like frequency converters, off-gas cleaning and automation technology.
The design of the RecoPhos process itself as well as of a future semi-industrial pilot plant was constantly enhanced according to the experimental results.
The RecoPhos process was developed by using a complementary approach combining mathematical modelling and experimental investigations at laboratory scale. Additionally the bench scale plant/small pilot plant developed within the RecoPhos project allowed the variation of key process parameters such as temperature, ash composition, residence times or addi-tives in order to gain a profound insight into the process behaviour.
The thermodynamic and chemical processes taking place within the reactor were investigated using state-of-the-art modelling and simulation methods. These combined results provided the basis for the before mentioned design of a semi-industrial pilot plant which are planned to be built after the end of the RecoPhos project.
The technological investigations were complemented by a market study and a Life Cycle As-sessment to evaluate the environmental and economic impact of the RecoPhos process.
Project Results:
RecoPhos aimed in a multidisciplinary way to ensure the optimal research outcome and commercial exploitation of its results by mobilising the critical mass of scientific knowledge as well as eco-environmental application skills. The members of RecoPhos represented the required expertise from various research areas in order to achieve a real-breakthrough of an urgently needed successful phosphorus recovery process.
Most of that expertise was already based on previous national & international projects & initiatives, in which some of the project partners participated (e.g. URIOM – Upgrading and utilisation of residual iron oxide materials for hot metal production; FORWAST - Mapping of physical flows and stocks of resources to forecast waste quantities in Europe regarding waste prevention and recycling; …..)
The RecoPhos project presented a completely new approach to recover phosphorus from sewage sludge ash. Novel and absolutely innovative technologies from the research point of view within RecoPhos were:
- The use of a reacting fixed bed to extract phosphorus from different P-matrices resulted in new chemical and thermodynamic processes. In the RecoPhos project, these were investigated practically and theoretically for the first time.
- The modular system of the InduCarb offered new possibilities to investigate the separation of gaseous products of thermo-chemical reactions.
- The pre-treatment of the sludge / sludge ash in an extra purifying step is another aspect that was theoretically considered in the RecoPhos project.
- The understanding of the processes taking place in the RecoPhos-reactors opened new insights in thermo-chemical process engineering, which will now be used to initiate further research on that field.
- The description of the high-temperature chemistry of P-containing systems will be improved.
- The ecological assessment of the RecoPhos process on the basis of the results of the RecoPhos project, compared with other phosphate processing techniques increased the knowledge about resources management, and the future phosphorus economy in particular.
However, RecoPhos can be seen as a commercially driven project. This commercial perspective of the project is an important measure for the successful exploitation and the implementation of an environmental friendly solution on a European and global level.
Potential Impact:
IMPACT
Strategic Impact
Cross-European development, multidisciplinary working teams (chemical engineers, safety & environmental experts, etc.) and integration of different eco-efficient environmental technologies strongly depends on the ability to cope with the inherent complexity of technologies and environments in order to boost organisational, national, international as well as individual performance and productivity.
Phosphorus recovery from sewage sludge is one major goal of European environmental policy. However, only little of the European sewage sludge can be processed to phosphorus or its products due to still unsolved severe technical problems.
As the respective state of the art can still only solve a small part of the problem of valuable phosphorus being wasted by inappropriate disposal, RecoPhos with its maximum yield of phosphorus and minimum amount of waste could close a big gap in the market of phosphorus recycling. With the help of RecoPhos and accompanied by necessary changes in the European sludge management strategy, a big share of the P-consumption in Europe could be covered by secondary resources in a longer term.
The RecoPhos project aimed to contribute to the general European strategy of a) preventing waste; b) minimising waste and c) if possible re-using it as a new raw material. Beside that the business area environmental technologies is one of the fast growing economic sectors in Europe and quite important for the pioneering role of Europe in relation with an environmental-friendly policy.
The new RecoPhos phosphorus recovery process has a fundamental impact on:
a) sustainable management of the limited resource phosphorus, which is essential for all life processes;
b) higher resource efficiency through a recovery process and related decrease of EU dependency on resource imports;
c) lower environmental impact e.g. by slowing down the environmentally critical phosphate mining and refining;
d) more competitiveness of all participating companies/organisations;
e) new eco-efficient environmental technologies.
However, the state of the art on environmental technologies in Europe is rather different and the legal and organisational requirements are varying in the different national environments. In this context the project RecoPhos contributed to the development of new standardised technologies & processes that enables the solution to a specific environmental problem at least on a European level.
The consortium features major participation of SMEs as experts for
– process development;
– basic and detail engineering;
– process modelling and simulation;
– safety and environmental assessment;
– special plant construction.
These RecoPhos work fields required a high degree of flexibility, innovation and expertise, properties that were provided by the SME partners of the RecoPhos Consortium.
The know-how gained in the project and the new contacts will open new fields of action and collaboration between the SME partners and the participating corporation and other large firms.
The participation of a large company grants best chances to bring RecoPhos to an industrial success due to its deep know how, profound knowledge of the market, as well as widely spread contacts to other companies and authorities.
Impact on Society & Environmental Impact
The development of a new thermo-chemical process for the recovery of phosphorus (from sewage sludge and sewage sludge ashes) contributes to the prevention of a number of environmental problems/risks, which otherwise might be quite costly and hazardous to health for the European Society in the long run. These are illustrated in the following examples and data:
a) The potential of phosphorus to be recovered from European (EU15) sewage sludge can be estimated to roughly 20% of the European (EU15) phosphorus consumption4; considering future enhancements of wastewater and sludge treatment in countries currently lacking appropriate technology, this fraction can be much higher: In Germany up to 50% , in Switzerland around 80% of their net rock phosphate import ,4 could be sourced already from sludge.
b) One ton of calcium-silicate slag used as binder in the cement industry can save the emission of 400 kg of emission of fossil CO2.
c) The direct use of sewage sludge as fertiliser can be reduced. This will also reduce the distribution of heavy metals and organic pollutants to soils and further on to the food chain.
d) The new RecoPhos process will have a positive impact on the general environmental performance, reducing pollution and land use by traditional phosphate mining – to use sewage sludge ash is virtually a form of “urban mining”.
e) By the use of industrial wastes as additives, the waste amount of other industrial sectors can be reduced. At the same time, the disposal of sewage sludge or ash respectively as solid waste is not necessary, reducing land use and potential pollution even further.
f) The exploitation of the finite resource phosphorus is slowed down, thus minimising land use, environmental pollution and social problems by mining activities, but still allowing economic growth. The use of the other outputs (Fe-alloy, HM-dust) in the metal industry will also reduce resource depletion.
g) By the use of sludge ash as secondary resource, the CO2-emissions caused by mining and refining of natural phosphates can be saved. By the use of the RecoPhos end slag, the decarbonatation of limestone in cement kilns can be avoided, which is responsible for large CO2 emissions.
h) The thermo-chemical process within RecoPhos can be seen as an instrument for intelligent waste management, because it converts problematic waste into the valuable raw material white phosphorus, as well as other usable products. Thus the actual waste amount will be reduced to almost 0% of the educt.
i) The two step RecoPhos process will use mostly alternative / renewable energy sources (wastes) and a minimum of fossil energy (~ 10% of total energy input), and also produce a minimal amount of waste (< 1% of input) by transforming almost all sludge ash ingredients to valuable products.
j) Accompanying all environmental and safety aspects were continually monitored in order to guarantee that the life cycle of the RecoPhos solution is not having any negative effects on the environment or the human health.
Dissemination and/or exploitation of project results, and management of intellectual property
The RecoPhos Consortium considered dissemination and exploitation as extremely important activities. The project maintained a particular document called “Dissemination and Exploitation Plan”, which got an officially submitted update once a year.
For achieving the impacts described above the Consortium had a clear and actively managed dissemination and exploitation plan which contained the following key elements:
- Presentations, publication and publicity, including press releases;
- Presentations at academic conferences and in academic journals;
- Market Strategy.
Dissemination during and after the project
As already mentioned a combined dissemination & exploitation plan was designed to spread excellence.
The target audience (beyond the research community) was seen as follows:
- Professionals in the environmental area;
- Policy decision makers at different levels of political activity;
- Phosphorus/phosphoric acid consumers (=> they should opt for recycled phosphorus);
- Citizens.
Therefore a number of dissemination mechanisms which address the different target segments were established within the RecoPhos project.
a) Press releases: The aim was to attract interest and raise awareness on the project through well written and targeted press releases.
b) Project video: A 5-minutes video was produced in order to present the RecoPhos project to the general public (available on the project website).
c) RecoPhos public web page: RecoPhos maintains a public web page which contains comprehensive information on the project and its results.
d) Customised flyers dedicated to various target audiences.
• Exhibitions: The participation within exhibitions such as IFAT, Achema etc. will enable that the project results can be introduced to a wider general and professional audience.
• Organisation of and participation in industry workshops and conferences.
Exploitation plans of the RecoPhos Consortium:
The handling of the IPR issues and the management of knowledge follows the general guidelines and processes detailed in the RecoPhos Consortium Agreement.
That means that the following general confidentiality and IPR rules within EC funded projects were applied:
• Confidentiality is maintained for all information gained from partners through deliverables or by other means while carrying out the project, if this information is not already in the public domain.
• If any of the partners wanted to publish partial or final results they seeked prior clearance from the other partners (procedure defined in Consortium Agreement).
• The partners included in the Consortium Agreement a list of the existing background IPR that they are brought to the project as a basis for their RTD and which remained their property.
• They clearly identified those items that are freely available to partners for access and/or for use; and those that are subject to commercial restrictions or payment of licence fees. On the other hand they specified what was specifically excluded from the project.
• Researchers had the right to publish research results, subject to the terms of the Consortium Agreement.
• Any foreground knowledge created and protected by one partner was made equally available to all other partners of the project at preferential licensing terms (as compared to terms offered to the market).
However, the Consortium structure was fixed in a way that from the proposal phase on, that it was already clear who is developing what kind of results and who was responsible for the final exploitation of the particular project results.
Market strategy and related commercial exploitation plans:
Marketing strategy and related exploitation plans were developed upon the assumption that social and environmental requirements (including legal requirements) as well as limited natural phosphorous resources are putting more pressure than ever before on national & European authorities that phosphorus is going to be recycled.
As the RecoPhos process has the huge potential to successfully recover phosphorous it is assumed that the new RecoPhos process will rapidly fold over from the planned bench scale unit to a semi-industrial pilot approach following a commercial mainstream application within the next few years. In this connection it is intended that SGL Carbon GmbH will act as the main exploitation partner whereas all the other RecoPhos partners will get a share of the profit if the RecoPhos process can be exploited successfully. Besides that SGL holds already the corresponding patents (Flash, InduCarb and RecoDust), which are required for the exploitation of the RecoPhos process.
Please find below the individual exploitation plans of all RecoPhos project partners.
SGL CARBON GMBH (SGL)
SGL CARBON GmbH is the main exploitation partner within the RecoPhos Consortium and has, as worldwide and European market leader of carbon and graphite products the market power to exploit the RecoPhos project results. In addition to the 2 base patents (Recodust and Inducarb) access for development purposes, SGL has decided to play the role of the main exploitation partner of this new technology. It is SGL`s intent to promote this new technology throughout various waste water sewage sludge markets to help them solving an ever growing environmental burden while developing a new raw material stream for the production of White Phosphorus. SGL has proven in the recent past that his internal access to the latest technologies/know-how in high temperature material/applications in conjunction with special anti-corrosive properties through its Technology and Innovation department would make him a preferred partner to roll-out commercially such innovative process. At this moment, SGL is currently assessing the market dimension to better fit the process dimension to optimize its profitability. A team will be soon created internally to define, while utilizing Six Sigma methodologies, adapted to “process commercialization”, the milestone roadmap to properly render this exciting project. With the involvement of the project partners, which also have specific expertise, SGL can count on a solid base of know-how and manpower to encounter the various hurdles that may arose. Financially, SGL has access to funding partners which will be interested in sharing the risk around erecting a properly sized industrial pilot plant after a successfully finished project RecoPhos.
Montanuniversität Leoben (MUL)
MUL as an academic institution is well known for its excellent research performance in the environmental area and its related applications. MUL intends to exploit the RecoPhos results in two ways. Firstly, the results which are part of MUL research will be integrated into the RecoPhos framework and exploited together with the other RecoPhos Consortium`s partners. Secondly, RecoPhos project results will play an important part within all ongoing and future research projects which relate to environmental technologies.
This means that one important aim of MUL is to contribute with its particular research work in RecoPhos to closer industry-related research cooperation in the environmental area.
Another important goal will be that the developed project results are used in context with student education at Montanuniversität Leoben.
Beside that several high quality conference presentations and publications in international scientific journals was prepared during the project duration.
University of Stuttgart (USTUTT)
USTUTT is represented in this project by their Institute for Sanitary Engineering, Water Quality and Solid Waste Management (ISWA), which has been dealing with the environmentally friendly treatment and disposal of sewage sludge for decades. Hence the recovery of Phosphorus has been in the focus of their work for over 10 years now. RecoPhos added a new dimension to the expertise of the ISWA in that topic, offering the opportunity to widen their field of research by new insights into thermo-chemical process engineering and resources management, and mainly also by the contacts to possible new research partners.
The gained know-how can be transferred to future research projects, and it will also serve to keep the lectures (e.g. Sludge Treatment, Resources Management, Chemistry of Waste) up to date.
USTUTT published parts of their work in reviewed journals and on international conferences.
M.A.L. Metallbau Anlagenservice – Leitungsbau Gesellschaft m.b.H. (MAL)
MAL is very specialized SME regarding the manufacturing of burners and reactors for high temperature processes in several industrial sectors such as metallurgy, cement industry and glass industry. Therefore MAL enhanced its already high experience in the field of design, digital prototyping and manufacturing of bench scale plants/pilot plants. MAL is also aiming to be a partner by the upscaling and erection of the operational industrial plant after the end of the RecoPhos project.
INERCO, Ingeniería, Tecnología y Consultoría, S.A. (INER)
INERCO is an engineering company that is recently developing activities in the field of the waste management and is interested in being involved in the exploitation of this type of technology.
INERCO has been authorized since 2008 by the environmental authority of Andalusia (Regional Government in Spain) for the management of dangerous wastes.
This permit allows INERCO to developing some waste management operations, and in particular related with contaminated soils remediation.
The framework waste legislation in Europe indicates that Member States shall take appropriate measures to encourage, first, the prevention or reduction of waste production and its harmfulness. And second, the recovery of waste by means of recycling, reuse or reclamation or any other process with a view to extracting secondary raw materials; or the use of waste as a source of energy.
Considering the mentioned above, if finally this RecoPhos project becomes an available (technical and economically) technology that helps to use sewage sludge and sludge ash without the actual problems, INERCO itself or with other partners would play the role of waste manager, agent or another necessary figure to get moving a real market of any way of use total or partially the sludges or recovered products.
InsPyro N.V.
InsPyro is consulting company for high temperature materials processing companies. Using the results of the RecoPhos project, InsPyro:
- improves its process development competence;
- improves the chemical databases used for modelling;
- continues to provide access to these competences through consulting, software and databases to small to large size materials treatment companies and recyclers;
- is able to also target waste treatment companies; and to
- use the project as a reference.
Hariri Chemical Process Engineering (H-CPE)
H-CPE will provide its extended professional know-how, within Process, Process Automation and control as well as Plant Safety to members, aiming the set-up of a process plant using the RecoPhos process on an industrial scale.
H-CPE intends to exploit the RecoPhos results as follows:
- The results which are part of H-CPE development shall be integrated into the RecoPhos framework and exploited together with the other RecoPhos Consortium`s partners.
- RecoPhos project results as well as developed methods and software will be used for industrial scale up and process plant design.
M.I.T. (Metallurgy & Inorganic Technology) (MIT)
MIT is a high-innovative consulting and engineering company which is intending to exploit its knowledge on “High Tec” inductive heating systems and processes (InduCarb and similar) including its capability of design & concept studies. Beside that MIT will enhance its own consulting service portfolio. Additionally MIT participates in the common exploitation activities of the RecoPhos process after the end of the project.
Gesellschaft für Chemischen und Technischen Umweltschutz mbH (GCTU)
GCTU intends to use its new knowledge and contacts to operate as consulting and planning company with respect to sustainable resource recovery especially in connection with future large-scale P-recycling projects in Europe and abroad.
The RecoPhos project results ensures GCTU an advantage in an unique thermal recycling technique. GTCU’s vision is to integrate technically simplified RecoPhos plants at any sewage sludge treatment plant resp. at any sewage sludge incinerator, worldwide, in order to produce both, a pure phosphoric acid, resp. a pure phosphate, and a useable slag e.g. for the cement industry. Thus, sewage sludge will be no longer a problematic waste but a completely utilisable (zero waste) raw material.
List of Websites:
www.recophos.org