Nutrient recovery from municipal waste stream: status and prospects

Abstract

Rapid demographic and economic changes along with urbanization have led to many pressing environmental issues such as pollution, extreme weather events, greenhouse has emissions and climate change that are interlinked. Solid waste and wastewater generation and its management are other contemporary issues lead to environmental and human health hazards. In addition, aggravated population growth is putting additional pressure on nonrenewable resources for food, energy and livelihood. Recently, there is a noteworthy increase in demand for nutrient supply in agricultural fields to augment productivity. However, concern over the long-term availability of these nutrients in particular of phosphorous and potassium is evident, which are primarily obtained from mineral deposits. Consequently, it is obligatory to find alternative options to meet the escalating demand for nutrient supply. In view of this, the organic fraction of municipal solid waste and wastewater has immense potential for nutrient recovery via different biorefinery platforms. This chapter aims to catalogue major published works on different technologies for nutrient recovery from different waste streams of relevance to the agricultural application. This will help to draw a possible road map toward future research in this domain and efficiently capitalize the untapped potential of waste stream for nutrient recovery that could solve twofold problems concurrently. © 2020 Elsevier Inc.