PhosFarm - Sustainable phosphorus recovery from agricultural residues through an enzymatic process

In addition to inorganic phosphate, the residues also contain organically bound phosphorus, which cannot easily be recovered. The industrial biotechnology working group uses an enzymatic process to convert the organically bound phosphorus into inorganic phosphate, which was later separated by the nutrient management working group.

In contrast to chemical degradation, the use of enzymes enables hydrolysis under mild conditions in an aqueous solution with good yields. The enzymes used for this purpose were initially selected by us with regard to selectivity, specificity and availability. The enzymatic hydrolysis itself was not only optimized with regard to the reaction parameters, analogously the process development is intensified under process engineering aspects. The focus of interest of both working groups was the establishment of a cost-efficient process for the recovery of inorganic phosphate from organically bound phosphorus from various sources.