Phosphorus recovery from sewage-sludge molten slag using a combination of acid-dissolution, alkali-precipitation, and ion-exchange

We recently reported an efficient procedure for recovering phosphoric acid from dephosphorization slag. This recovery procedure consists of a combination of the following four processes: (1) A first dissolution process of slag in a nitric acid solution; (2) a precipitation process then adds ammonia to the obtained eluate; (3) a second dissolution process dissolves the precipitation from the nitric acid eluate; and, (4) the final process involves ion exchange in which the obtained eluate is passed through an ion exchange resin. In the present study, this recovery procedure was applied to concentrate and recover phosphorus from sewage-sludge molten slag, which is an unused resource that should be considered a new resource for phosphorus. As a result, our procedure for recovery from dephosphorization slag was viable following two revisions. Initially, the time for the first dissolution process was extended from 0.2 h to 1 h, but 0.2 h proved to be the optimum time for dephosphorization slag. Next, we discovered it was better to perform the filtration one day after adding the ammonia instead of immediately after adding it. The other two processes could be treated under substantially the same conditions as in the case of dephosphorization slag, and high-purity phosphorus was obtained.