Circular Economy of phosphorus – challenges and findings in performing comparable LCA-studies of phosphorus-recycling

Institute of Sustainability in Civil Engineering – INaB, RWTH-Aachen, Germany

^* Corresponding author: roland.meyer@inab.rwth-aachen.de

Abstract

The European Union listed Phosphorus as a critical raw material. Large amounts of phosphorus are found in sludge from sewage treatment plants, from which the raw material can be recovered as fertilizer. Within the project RePhoR, funded by BMBF, recommendations to strengthen the recycling of phosphorus from sewage sludge will be developed that are methodically derived from a life cycle assessment (system perspective), an economic feasibility study and a social acceptance study. A special focus is on the comparability of various recycled fertilizers and consequently on the settings of different life cycle assessments (goal and scope) because they differ significantly in their fertilizing effect. Furthermore, combinations of different recycling technologies by extending the system boundaries will be evaluated with respect to the circular economy potential. Due to the early stage of the project, concrete results are still pending.