AMERSFOORT, The Netherlands – The Dutch Waterboard Vallei & Veluwe (The Waterboard) has opened a commercial nutrient recovery facility in partnership with Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies and Eliquo Water & Energy.
The project is part the Waterboard’s transformation of its Amersfoort Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) into an Energy and Nutrient Recovery Factory, supported by the EU LIFE+ subsidy program.
While seven sewage treatment plants have been converted into “energy and nutrient facilities” in the Netherlands, this is the first facility to produce a “ready to use” fertiliser product, according to Ostara.
Designed to treat more than 8,000 m3/day , the Amersfoort WWTP also acts as a regional sludge-processing hub for a number of WWTPs and imports approximately 40% of sludge from other locations.
With approximately 12,000 tonnes of dry sludge being treated annually, the facility was facing high operational costs for energy consumption and processing costs for sludge disposal.
At the transformed Amersfoort WWTP, all indigenous sludge produced as well as the sludge produced at the WWTP’s of Soest, Nijkerk and Woudenberg will be centrally digested at the new facility.
The facility was designed and constructed by the Dutch company, Eliquo Water & Energy.
The process of digestion is being enhanced with Eliquo’s Thermal Pressure Hydrolysis (TPH) process called LysoTherm®, in order to increase the biogas and related energy production.
As a result, the new facility will produce enough energy to treat all the wastewater from the City of Amersfoort on a 100% energy-autonomous basis, as well as an energy surplus, enough to provide 600 households with green electricity during the year.
Operations and resource recovery are further enhanced by removing phosphorous from the liquid wastewater stream using Ostara’s Pearl technology.
The Amersfoort WWTP features one Pearl®2K reactor with the capacity to remove 85% of the phosphorus and up to 15% of the nitrogen from liquid wastewater streams.
Ostara’s WASSTRIP technology has also been implemented which the company said increases the amount of phosphorous recovered by more than 60% for added operational and revenue generating benefits.
Valuable nutrients recovered are sold as a 99.6% pure, granular Crystal Green fertiliser, which is European Certified in the category with the highest quality fertilisers.
This product is composed of phosphorous, nitrogen and magnesium (5-28-0-10Mg), and is sold and marketed by Ostara through a global network of blenders and distributors to professionals in the turf, horticultural and agriculture sectors.
The new facility has the capacity to produce approximately 900 tonnes of Crystal Green annually, and Vallei & Veluwe will receive revenue for every ton of fertiliser it produces.