Reviewed by Lexie CornerJun 13 2025
Engineers from Washington College in St. Louis’s McKelvey Faculty of Engineering have developed a composite nanotechnology that extracts and recovers vitamins from wastewater. These vitamins can then be reused as feedstock for biorefineries or agricultural fertilizers. The method additionally helps decrease the chance of poisonous algal blooms.
Younger-Shin Jun’s lab developed a novel composite nanotechnology that removes and recovers vitamins from wastewater, subsequently upcycling them as agricultural fertilizers or as biorefinery feedstocks whereas concurrently mitigating the incidence of dangerous algal blooms. Picture Credit score: Younger-Shin Jun
Extra vitamins in wastewater can result in dangerous algal blooms. These blooms have each environmental and financial impacts.
Professor Younger-Shin Jun and Ph.D. scholar Minkyoung Jung developed mineral-hydrogel composites that may extract and recuperate ammonium and phosphate from wastewater.
The composites comprise nanoscale struvite and calcium phosphate mineral seeds. These supplies can scale back ammonia and phosphate ranges by as much as 60 % and 91 %, respectively. This helps restrict algae progress and the discharge of associated toxins.
A 2000 report from the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that poisonous algal blooms in U.S. coastal waters trigger annual financial losses between $33.9 million and $81.6 million. This underscores the relevance of the know-how.
The hydrogel works equally to the moisture-absorbing materials utilized in disposable diapers. Jun’s group appeared to pure processes for each inspiration and environmental profit of their design.
We designed these hydrogel composites to recuperate ammonia and phosphate, important vitamins whose overabundance causes algal bloom. Ammonia synthesis is energy-intensive, and phosphorus sources are dwindling. Our mineral-hydrogel composites permit us to reap these vitamins from wastewater and repurpose them as fertilizers and feedstock for biorefineries.
Younger-Shin Jun, Professor, Washington College in St. Louis
The tactic makes use of nanoparticle nucleation, the place tiny strong particles start to type in water. It is just like how sugar crystals develop on a string when making rock sweet.
To information this course of, Jun’s group embedded ultra-small mineral seeds right into a hydrogel. These seeds encompass calcium phosphate and struvite—a mineral manufactured from magnesium, ammonium, and phosphate—that binds with calcium and different ions.
As ammonia and phosphate within the wastewater connect to the seeds, the hydrogel will increase in dimension. Throughout this course of, the typical particle dimension grew from 6.12 to 14.8 nanometers.
This strategy addresses three main challenges in typical nutrient elimination: low assortment effectivity, issue eradicating each ammonia and phosphate collectively, and inconsistent efficiency underneath totally different water circumstances. It reduces nutrient ranges to the purpose the place algal blooms might be prevented.
Jun highlighted the strategy’s scalability. It has been examined with as much as 20 liters of wastewater, and the group is now increasing to 200 liters.
“This demonstrates the sensible software potential of our basic scientific analysis, displaying a viable path from the laboratory to on a regular basis know-how. This pioneering work represents a major development in environmental engineering, turning a waste downside right into a useful useful resource and exemplifying sustainability in motion,” Jun added.
Jun labored with Washington College’s Workplace of Know-how Administration to patent the mineral hydrogel know-how.
The research was funded by the U.S. Environmental Safety Company and the U.S. Division of Vitality.
Journal Reference:
Jung, M., et al. (2025) Molecular Insights into Novel Struvite–Hydrogel Composites for Simultaneous Ammonia and Phosphate Removing. Environmental Science & Know-how. doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c11700.
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