PHOSFARM · Process for sustainable phosphorus recovery from agricultural residues by enzymatic process to enable a service business for the benefit of European farm community

PhosFarm addresses the increasing market for a sustainable and economically phosphorus (P) recovery from agricultural residues to meet growing demand for food, bio-fuels and bio-materials. Recent studies demonstrated that the EU is highly vulnerable to the foreseeable P scarcity because of its entire dependency on imported phosphate rocks for the fertilizer production. To avoid this dependency, new technologies have been developed to recovery inorganic P as phosphate salts. Agricultural residues are the most important source for P-recovery, but more than 40% of the P is present as organic compounds. Thus, this share is not available for precipitation as P-salts. PhosFarm is a partnership of European SMEs that recognized the business opportunity of recovering P from agricultural residues by a novel process that recovers both organic and inorganic P. They have identified scientific information about feasibility to convert organic P to phosphate by an enzymatic mineralisation and aspire to come up with an industrial process. Key innovation will be the advanced phosphate recovery through a controlled enzymatic release of more than 90% of the organic P. The result will be an increased phosphate concentration in the liquid fraction, available for P-salt precipitation. The solid fraction will be an excellent soil conditioner, compounded on customer’s demand with the precipitated salts achieving an optimal N/P ratio, minimising the risk of over-fertilisation. PhosFarm can produce P2O5 for 0.94€/kg compared to today’s market price of 1.20€/kg. SMEs will be able to generate €30mill. revenues within first 5 years by manufacture of the equipment, supply of beads for enzyme immobilisation and another €42 mill. by operation or license of the process and trade of products. PhosFarm supports various European Directives about waste and renewable resources like EU Waste Policy or Water Framework Directive (200/60/EC). Products will meet Council regulation (EC) No 2003/2003.