The FlashPhos process consists of
1. a dryer-grinder to produce very fine dust from sewage sludge,
2. a flash gasification to remove the organics and impurities,
3. a reduction furnace (“refiner”) to reduce phosphates and extract elemental white phosphorus (P4) from the purified slag and
4. a granulator transferring the liquid slag into a cementitious material.
The dryer-grinder (1.) allows us to produce extremely dry and fine dust for the following step, without having to implement an energy-consuming extra grinding step.
The combination of gasification (2.) and reduction (3.) allows us to produce a very pure white phosphorus, compared to the product from the conventional P-production.
The innovative granulation (4.) will transform the final mineral residue (ca. 40% of the input material) into a marketable product, and recover the heat of the melt.
Parallel to the conceptual and technical development, FlashPhos performs sustainability studies, directly influencing the development in order to enhance the situation of the European society, environment and economy compared to the status quo. This is for example by introducing a technological concept with a completely circular material flow, using only secondary resources with no solid residues to be disposed of.
Our vision by 2025:
"FlashPhos goes to market in Europe: first process in the world to sustainably produce white phosphorus for the chemical industry in a full circular economy model, surpassing the quality of white phosphorus on the market today."
This full circular economy model offers to all European countries, in addition to producing more sustainable white phosphorus and cement, a future-oriented way to remove contaminants in sewage sludge and other wastes from the biosphere, which they are currently strongly polluting.
Through our communication and dissemination activities we have made FlashPhos known to relevant stakeholders from the industry, politics, academia and the public. We already established contact to various key players, which we will deepen and multiply in the coming project years, in order to provide FlashPhos a good start position for market entry in 2025.
