From Burden To Blessing: The Value of Resource Recovery

The name “wastewater” doesn’t accurately describe water that has been used, says Jim Porteous, from Ovivo.  Wastewater is not waste— it holds a plethora of valuable resources including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and the water itself, which can be cleaned and reused.

“For too long we’ve been talking about wastewater. We need to be talking about we really have which is resources,” says Porteous in a recent interview with Water Online Radio. “So if we can recover all of those, we can really take what has been a big burden on cities and turn it into a blessing.”

Ovivo is working on new technology that will make resource recovery even more efficient.

“We’ve always produced biogas. We believe we can actually utilize it more effectively going forward and create more value out of that carbon,” he says. “Phosphorus recovery is something that’s also very critical because there’s a limited supply of phosphorus in the world. Our goal is to recover as much of the phosphorus as possible.  That’s technology we’ll probably introduce here in about nine months’ time.”

To learn more about water and resource recovery click the link below for the full interview