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L. Egle, H. Rechberger, M. Zessner:
"Overview and description of technologies for recovering phosphorus from municipal wastewater";
Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 105 (2015), Dezember; S. 325 - 346.

Over the past years, numerous technologies have been developed to recover phosphorus (P) fromwaste streams to repair currently broken nutrient cycles. These developments were largely triggeredby environmental considerations (sustainability, resource efficiency), concerns regarding the finite andgeopolitically concentrated deposits of raw phosphate ore, and phosphate price increases. Municipalwastewater is a promising and viable source to recover P in larger quantities, to re-establish a cir-cular economy and therefore increase net use efficiency. This work compiles the latest knowledge onapproaches to recover P from municipal wastewater and related waste flows with a specific focus on theexisting well-developed wastewater management infrastructure, available in significant parts of Europe(e.g., secondary treated effluent, digester supernatant, sewage sludge, sewage sludge ash). About 50 tech-nologies were identified at various levels of development (industrial-, full-, pilot- and laboratory scale).The current selection of P recovery processes is broad and ranges from simple precipitation of dissolved Pto complex multi-step approaches, and only a few of these displayed potential for full-scale implementa-tion. They are discussed with regard to their technical principles, process parameters, recovery efficiency,resource demand, possible effects on wastewater treatment, waste flows, and fate of pollutants. We alsoevaluated them with respect to their rates of P removal from wastewater and their access points of Precovery. For selected technologies, material flow models are presented to facilitate the understandingof even complex processes. This work serves as a basis for future integrated comparative assessments ofselected recovery approaches according to technical, environmental and economic criteria.