Research and development leading to commercial feed and fertilizer products made from struvite extracted from dairy wastewater.

Multiform Harvest Inc. ("Multiform") produces the fertilizer struvite, which is magnesium ammonium phosphate hexahydrate. Multiform produces the struvite by extracting it from wastewaters containing excess phosphorus. Multiform sells into two markets: 1) wastewater generators who need to reduce the phosphorus content of the wastewater; and 2) consumers of the nutrients provided by the struvite produced at the wastewater generator sites. The SBIR project focuses on the second market (nutrient consumers). This project, of which the phase I is complete, seeks to further improve the economics of the struvite extraction technology, thus accelerating its adoption, by developing means to convert the crude struvite produced by the extraction process to a higher-value, specialized product. The activities planned for phase II of the project aim to work out continuous, commercially useful processes and apparatuses to produce the high-value products (pellets and formed products such as spikes and tablets) for which the first phase provided product specifications and laboratory-scale, batch type means of producing. Specifically, the technical objectives are (1) Verify market information achieved through Phase I research for five targeted products through direct consultation with buyers. Present upgraded struvite products to buyers and verify that they are ready for commercial sale at a known value; (2) Confirm that struvite products meet buyer nutritional and performance specifications through greenhouse growing trial; (3) Identify potential processes for commercial-scale continuous drying and forming, and identify the necessary struvite conditions and formulas; (4) Develop and monitor continuous manufacturing processes for pelletizing and forming products at laboratory scale; (5) Design and build prototype a manufacturing system capable of drying and forming struvite into one or more target products; and (6) Determine capital and production costs for full operating system, and compare with market data for profit estimate for one or more systems.