Plant nutrients from wastewater
Plants cannot thrive without nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous or potassium, therefore farmers usually use organic and industrially manufactured mineral fertilisers to supply wheat, maize and others with these vital substances. In future, the need for nutrients will be soaring because we will only be able to supply the world's growing population with food and cover surging demands for biofuels by using fertilisers. Logically, that causes the prices for these nutrients to skyrocket. But that is not the only problem. The deposits of rock phosphates required for manufacturing phosphate fertilisers are becoming increasingly scarce. The researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart, Germany are working at alternatives. They want to recover these essential nutrients from wastewater...