Ostara

Editor's Notes

1. The phosphorus cycle today is unsustainable. Phosphate rock is mined from stores in select places of our globe. Phosphorus fertilizer refining creates phosphate hazardous waste. Fertilizer is used to feed crops and livestock, runoff, leaching. Without phosphorus treatment, treatment plants discharge P to the surface waters. All this phosphorus in our surface water has resulted in environmental impacts such as dead zones and eutrophication of our waterways. The EPA estimates that more than 15,000 bodies of water have nutrient impairments including highly used recreational areas such as the Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie, and (insert local place) right in your backyard. And why do we do what we do? The phosphorus cycle today is broken, in every sense Globally we are facing a nutrient crisis With deadzones the size of the state of Georgia (95,000 miles) due to nutrient pollution from both point and non-point sources and unsustainable supply and demand of this very valuable nutrient And this is how Ostara solves this problem.
2. MAP SOURCE: http://anz.ipni.net/article/ANZ-3186, Source, USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/phosphate_rock/index.html#mcs) Although the stocks of rock phosphate, the main source of mineral P fertilizers, are difficult to assess, there is a growing concern that mines might be depleted within a century Morocco listed as 50000 BMT (billion metric tonnes), source: http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pnadw835.PDF
3. Ostara recovers P from nutrient rich waters allowing discharge criteria to be met while producing a high value fertilizer We help treatment plants meet their discharge limits by recovering P. Our fertilizer production process is significantly more sustainable than that used for traditional P fertilizers. And Crystal Green, our fertilizer product, is the most sustainable P fertilizer available because it is only available to plants when they need phosphorus.
4. It is nice to talk about what we do, but it is nice to talk about where we have done it.
5. Pima County – 33-calowa rura zwęziła się do 1-cala w ciągu 2 tygodni. HRSD – rura zwęziła się od 8-cali do 1-cala w ciągu 6 tygodni. Problem jest zazwyczaj rozwiązywany przez dodanie chlorku żelaza (co uniemożliwia biologiczne wykorzystanie P)
6. Wytrącanie struwitu w komorach fermentacyjnych
7. Nuisance struvite is a challenge for treatment plants. It can form in digesters where the presence of ammonia from the digestion process combined with dissolved ortho-p and magnesium forms struvite. We also see this accidental struvite forming in centrate lines and as part of added biosolids volume.
8. Treatment plants could choose to use chemicals to remove phosphorus. Here you see a treatment plant schematic showing a conventional treatment process including primary treatment, activated sludge, and secondary clarification where chemicals are being used for phosphorus removal. Using metal salts like alum and ferric chloride is expensive and creates large amounts of biosolids. There is a better way to remove phosphorus.
9. WASSTRIP and Pearl work together as part of the treatment plant process to recover phosphorus as a high-value fertilizer. WASSTRIP intercepts the WAS upstream of thickening. After thickening the filtrate is sent to Pearl. This filtrate is high in dissolved P and magnesium, but low in ammonia. The Thickened sludge goes to digestion where methanogens break down the carbon and create ammonia and methane gas in the process. After dewatering, centrate or other dewatering liquor that is high in ammonia is also routed to Pearl. These two influent streams combine to create the perfect environment for the formation of prills. There are numerous benefits to using this process. Let’s walk through them now.
10. We have talked about Ostara’s recovery solution which is a combination of Pearl and Wasstrip. This picture shows a schematic of what is happening in the pearl reactor. You have nutrient rich influent and wasstrip feed that comes into the bottom of the fluidized bed upflow reactor. Chemicals are added to create ideal reaction conditions with supersaturated magnesium at the proper pH. Reactor contents are recycled and treated effluent flows from the top of the reactor. Periodically an operator will start a harvest cycle to harvest Crystal Green.
11. We then heat treat, dry, classify and bag the market ready product in a fully-automated system. Our process not only creates a highly clean and pure end product; it creates a product that is ready for sale.
12. Load: 65 kgs Production: 500 tonnes
13. Metric sizes underneath
14. Load: 1260 kgs Production: 10000 tonnes
15. Horticulture picture
16. This data comes from dissolution studies conducted in June 2012 With MAP, the P releases faster than plants can take it up. P is lost to soil and water environment and not available to the plant later in the season. As you can see, the Crystal Green releases more slowly than MAP, providing continuous feeding of P throughout the growing season and reducing the potential for P to enter the water environment. Source: Applied Chemical Technologies dissolution study conducted June 2012 This curve shows that under these conditions, CG releases nutrients more slowly than MAP (monoammonium phosphate). It also shows that the particle size of Crystal Green influences its release pattern, with smaller granule sizes releasing slightly faster and having a shorter longevity. The X-axis scale is generically labeled “time” because although these data experiment is measured in hours, the release of Crystal Green in normal field conditions is on a scale of months. Principle: A representative unground sample is exposed to a series of solvent extractions. Each extract is analyzed for the nutrient(s) of interest. Conditions are used to accelerate the release of nutrients compared to normal soil conditions. 5 grams of product is added to each column. Each extraction uses 475 mL of extraction solution (0.2% citric acid), which was circulated through the column at 50 deg C for 2-8 hours. 9 extractions total were done, but only 7 are shown on this graph because all product was released after 7 extractions.