UBC Professor Wins Award For Developing Phosphorus Recycling Technology

The University of British Columbia's Dr. Donald S. Mavinic, a world expert in wastewater treatment, is to receive one of Canada's most distinguished innovation awards, the Ernest C. Manning Awards Foundation recently announced.
Mavinic, a civil engineering professor and entrepreneur, will receive the $25,000 Dave Mitchell Award of Distinction for developing a unique technology to turn pipe-clogging and polluting phosphorus compounds in wastewater into environmentally friendly fertilizer.
His innovation turns a costly problem into a valuable product while addressing major environmental concerns. The dead zone-inducing phosphorus pollution of natural waters is one of the most significant environmental challenges facing the planet. Yet phosphorus is also a dwindling resource that food crops can't grow without. Ostara's Pearl Nutrient Recovery Process rescues phosphorus from sewage sludge, recycling the would-be pollutant as the environmentally friendly fertilizer, Crystal Green.
Mavinic worked out the chemistry and engineering for the phosphorus recovery system with his research associate Frederic Koch and graduate students at the University of British Columbia. Mavinic also helped spin-off the technology to Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies, Inc., the company that markets the Pearl Nutrient Recovery Process and Crystal Green fertilizer around the world.
A single Pearl reactor can produce more than 500 kilograms of high quality fertilizer per day, while saving wastewater treatment plants about $100,000 a year in cleanup costs to get mineral buildup out of pipes and equipment.
Removing the phosphorus from wastewater also keeps it out of rivers, lakes and oceans where it can wreak ecological havoc

"Ostara's technology not only helps to solve a major challenge faced by wastewater treatment facilities and communities around the world, but also serves an important role in protecting our natural waterways for future generations," says Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ostara board member.
A demonstration scale Pearl Nutrient Recovery Facility is operating in Edmonton, and commercial scale Pearl Nutrient Recovery Facilities are in operation at wastewater treatment facilities serving several cities near Portland, Oregon; as well as the region of Suffolk, Virginia and, soon, York, Pennsylvania, both near the ecologically-sensitive Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The technology has been successfully piloted in several locations across North America, Asia and Europe.