From bioindustry waste to premium fertilisers
In the project ‘Chemical recycling: from bio-based raw materials to safe, clean, and efficient fertilisers’, we aimed to develop a process to reclaim important nutrients from bioindustry waste, transforming them into high-quality fertilisers with well-defined chemistry and application areas.
Bioindustries in the pulp and paper, food, forestry, and animal sectors produce significant amounts of materials containing important nutrients such as potassium and phosphorus, which are essential for life but are often wasted due to heavy metal contamination.
Many of these streams are landfilled because of contamination with heavy metals, while others were applied to land as low-quality fertilisers. Neither option represented an optimal solution. Chemical processing to convert these materials into commercial compounds offered several advantages and significantly improved the sustainability of bio-based technologies.
In this project, “Chemical recycling: from bio-based raw materials to safe, clean, and efficient fertilisers”, we developed a robust process to decontaminate materials and wastes from the aforementioned bioindustries and recover highly desired potassium and phosphorus fertilisers with well-defined chemistry and application areas.
Achievements
- A robust chemical solution for high-yield potassium recovery from biomaterials.
- Technology delivering clean commercial fertilizers like potassium sulfate.
- Validation trials proving functional equivalence to mined counterparts.
- Conceptual framework for bioindustries as circular resource hubs.
- Market analysis for commercial viability.
- Life cycle assessment demonstrating reduced environmental footprint.
- Achieving technology readiness level 5, market readiness level 6, and sustainability readiness level 5 by project end.
Link to Vinnova webpage: Chemical recycling: from bio-based raw materials to safe, clean, and efficient fertilizers | Vinnova
Participants
EasyMining (coordinator)
The Swedish Agricultural University - Department of Molecular Sciences and Department of Soil and Environment
Södra Skogsägarna
Ragn-Sells
Lantmännen
Funding
The project is funded under the strategic innovation program BioInnovation, a joint venture of Vinnova, Formas and The Swedish Energy Agency.
