A professor at Michigan State University is part of a team developing a new method of removing phosphorous from our wastewater – a problem seriously affecting lakes and streams across the country.
In addition, Steven Safferman, an associate professor of biosystems and agricultural engineering, and colleagues at Columbus, Ohio, based-MetaMateria Technologies, are devising a cost-effective way of recovering the phosphorous, which then can be reused for fertilizer products.
Although its use is regulated in many states, including Michigan, in items such as detergents and fertilizer, phosphorous is part of all food and remains a critical problem as it is always present in human and animal wastes.
Discharge from human and industrial wastewater and runoff into lakes and streams can cause what is known as eutrophication – making the water unsuitable for recreational purposes and reducing fish populations – as well as causing the growth of toxic algae.
What MetaMateria Technologies and Safferman have figured out and tested over the past 10 years is how to produce a media, enhanced with nanoparticles composed of iron, that can more efficiently remove larger amounts of phosphorous from water.
“Phosphorous that is dissolved in wastewater, like sugar in water, is hard to remove,” Safferman said. “We found that a nano-media made with waste iron can efficiently absorb it, making it a solid that can be easily and efficiently removed and recovered for beneficial reuse.”
Safferman added there are indications that their method of phosphorous retrieval is much more cost effective than processing phosphate rock.
Finally. Phospher additives in detergents really works in removing dirt and making things clean. It along with other chemicals in various farm fertilzers have turned upper Midwest lakes and rivers into disasters. Now our stuff is not so clean as there is a prohibition on phosper in soaps and detergents.
The wife and I decided to try new fishing turf out of boredom so we fished many lakes in western and central Wisconsin. One and all, they were so full of algae our fish finder wouldn’t work due to scattering of the signal. That’s a shame as those are some really nice lakes otherwise. We’ve got rivers with the same issues.
Now if we can just find a cheap way to neutralize farm runoff and/or kill off the algae without harming the other plants and fish…