Extraction and Purification of Phosphorus from the Ashes of Incinerated Biological Sewage Sludge.

Phosphorus depletion represents a significant problem. Ash of incinerated biological sewage sludge (BSS) contains P, but the presence of heavy metals (e.g., Fe and Al) is the main issue. Based on chemical characterization by SEM-EDS, ED-XRF and ICP-OES techniques, the characteristics and P content of bottom ash (BA) and fly ash (FA) of incinerated BSS were very similar. On BA, P extraction carried out in counter- current with an S:L ratio of 1:10 and H₂SO₄ 0.5 M led to better extraction yields than those of a similar test with H₂SO₄ 1 M and an S:L ratio of 1:5 (93% vs. 86%). Comparing yields with H₂SO₄ 0.5 M (S:L ratio of 1:10), the counter-current method gave better results than those of the crossflow method (93% vs. 83.9%), also improving the performance obtained with HCl in crossflow (93% vs. 89.3%). The results suggest that the purification of the acid extract from heavy metals with pH variation was impractical due to metal precipitation as phosphates. Extraction with H₂SO₄ and subsequent treatment with isoamyl alcohol represented the best option to extract and purify P, leading to 81% extraction yields of P with low amounts of metals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]