Research and Innovation Agenda for Recovery of Nutrients from Wastewater

Projects funded on the topic of nutrient recovery and reuse in Sweden over the past years have been scattered, lacking a coherence in direction and coordination between the numerous research funding organizations. This agenda has been developed with the purpose of creating a framework and common understanding of what research and innovation is necessary to move forward in a transition to a circular nutrient economy. The goal was to identify and prioritize the R&I needs in order to enable a productive dialogue between investors, researchers and other crucial societal actors including organizations, the public sector and the industry.

The results and conclusions presented in this report are mainly drawn from a workshop in September 2019, with around 40 participants representing the water and wastewater sector, municipalities, academia, the agricultural sector, the industry and Swedish national agencies.

In the transition to a more circular management of nutrients including waste streams, several challenges were identified. The identified challenges in a nutshell:

- Current system solutions are not optimized, there is a lack of holistic approach- Business models and incentives to choose products based on recovered nutrients on the market are missing- Technology needed for circular management of nutrients are in general on a low technology readiness level- Recovered nutrient products must maintain a uniform and high quality in order to compete on the market and the requirements should be the same for all fertilizers.

The agenda concludes that the research and innovation actions to meet the challenges should follow a holistic approach that includes the entire value chain of nutrient management in the food system. All essential nutrients in the food system and other resources in its waste streams should be considered, to maximize efficient and circular nutrient management. Based on this understanding, that a holistic approach is of such importance to target the identified challenges, the research and innovation needs were identified as:

- Develop a national plant nutrient management strategy that describes holistically how to manage nutrients overall in a circular economy- Develop goals and targets for nutrient recovery from wastewater based on this nutrient management strategy (the Swedish inquiry on sludge management suggested a requirement of 60 % phosphorus recovery from wastewater treatment plants, this should just be the beginning and goals should also be set for other nutrients)- A larger interdisciplinary R&I effort regarding the recovery goals should be coordinated to analyze how the transition to a circular management of nutrients best can be accomplished on a systems level- Provide support to develop business models for optimal collaboration between different actors in different parts of the value chain and maximized resource efficiency- Technology development and demonstrations aligned with the holistic approach for circular management of nutrients in the suggested national nutrient management strategy