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10/21/2005 15:22

Rising like a Phoenix from ash - environmentally friendly fertilisers from sewage sludge

Margit Fink Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Bundesforschungsanstalt für Landwirtschaft (FAL)

    Municipal sewage sludge contains a number of plant nutrients like for instance phosphorus (P), which is a non-renewable resource going into depletion within the next 100 years. But sewage sludge contains also a number of hazardous inorganic and organic compounds, which makes its direct use as fertilisers in agriculture questionable. Funded by the European Union and coordinated by the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing in Berlin (BAM) an international consortium of research institutes and companies from Austria, Finland, Germany and The Netherlands is now going to develop the technical basis for a safe recycling of P from municipal sewage sludge. "SUSAN - Sustainable and Safe Re-use of Municipal Sewage Sludge for Nutrient Recovery" employs a complex process where during mono-combustion of sewage sludge organic compounds are totally destroyed and inorganic substances removed by formation of volatile salts. BAM conducts thermo-chemical investigations for the separation of heavy metals from sewage sludge ashes and for the conversion of P into plant available species on a laboratory and small technical scale. Scientists from the Institute of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science of the Federal Agricultural Research Centre in Braunschweig (FAL) develop methods for quality control, evaluate the plant availability of P in the new fertiliser products and establish soil biological strategies for P mobilisation in order to achieve the complete utilisation of P by crop plants.

    Contacts: Prof. Dr. Dr. Ewald Schnug and Dr. Sylvia Kratz, Federal Agricultural Research Center (FAL), Institute of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science, Bundesallee 50, D-38116 Braunschweig, phone +49 531 596 2101, E-mail: pb@fal.de
    and:
    Dr. Gerd Kley and Dr.-Ing. Christian Adam, Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, Working Group IV.33 "Thermochemical Substance Separation", Richard-Willstätter-Straße 11, D-12489 Berlin, phone: +49 30 6392 5851 & 030 8104 1433; E-mail: Gerd.Kley@bam.de & Christian.Adam@bam.de


    More information:

    http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news132673 - deutsche Fassung der Pressemitteilung


    Images

    Participants of EU-project SUSAN in the wind tunnel of the former German Research Center for Aviation (DVL), which measurement edifice  Berlin-Adlershof is used by the Federal Agency for  Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung (BAM) as pilot plant station
    Participants of EU-project SUSAN in the wind tunnel of the former German Research Center for Aviatio ...
    Foto: BAM
    None

    Scientists conducting a thermo-chemical experiment for separating heavy metals from sludge ashes in a small scale plant at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing in Berlin (BAM)
    Scientists conducting a thermo-chemical experiment for separating heavy metals from sludge ashes in ...
    Foto: BAM
    None


    Criteria of this press release:
    Biology, Environment / ecology, Oceanology / climate, Zoology / agricultural and forest sciences
    transregional, national
    Research projects
    English


     

    Participants of EU-project SUSAN in the wind tunnel of the former German Research Center for Aviation (DVL), which measurement edifice Berlin-Adlershof is used by the Federal Agency for Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung (BAM) as pilot plant station


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    Scientists conducting a thermo-chemical experiment for separating heavy metals from sludge ashes in a small scale plant at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing in Berlin (BAM)


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