Phosphorous is a valuable element that is essential as a fertilizer in agricultural and food industry. However, it has been speculated that the world phosphorus production from phosphate rock will inescapably decrease due to the depletion of its natural reserves. Reverse osmosis (RO) concentrate has a considerable level of organic phosphorous, mainly due to the application of phosphonate-based antiscalant to prevent scaling. The concentration of organic phosphorous in the RO concentrate can reach several mg/L. RO concentrate is typically discharged without recovering the phosphorous from organic phosphate in antiscalant. We proposed a hybrid adsorption-desorption-oxidation process to concentrate phosphorus on granular ferric hydroxide, recover it by desorption and convert it to valuable inorganic phosphorous form by oxidization with UV/H2O2. Results showed that 97% of the phosphorus in antiscalant could be recovered from the RO concentrate by adsorption and converted to phosphate mineral. This unique process has a great potential for better desalination concentrate management, reduce the effluent phosphorus concentration and produce valuable inorganic phosphate mineral simultaneously.

Phosphorus recovery from reverse osmosis concentrate

251st National Meeting (2016)

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