Bioptech joins Cleantech Inn Sweden
Phosphorus is essential to life on earth - plants, humans and animals need phosphorus to grow. However, it is a finite resource and causes eutrophication when spread in water streams. Bioptech offers an active filter to collect this finite resource from wastewater and recycle it as fertiliser, closing the phosphorus cycle and reducing eutrophication.
Our industrialised high yield agriculture is dependent on phosphorus in commercial fertilisers, where the supply of phosphorus comes mainly from finite reserves of phosphate rock. There is a common concern about the risk of phosphate depletion, which would lead to increasing fertiliser prices, resulting in higher food prices and causing major challenges to feed the earth’s population.
Some of the phosphorus from fertilisers spread out in fields is diluted by rain water and run out in streams, rivers and oceans, which can cause eutrophication in high concentrations. However, a majority of it goes all the way through the food chain and ends up in our sewages. Without any means of collecting the phosphorus in the wastewater treatment cycle, it is discharged directly into water sources and ‘lost’ to the environment.
Bioptech offers a filter solution to remove phosphorus in single sewer systems and then recycle the collected phosphorus as fertiliser. With 15 years of extensive research, Bioptech has a cutting-edge technology called Polonite®, which provides excellent performance and easy maintenance of phosphorus filters. The filters are currently focused on small households that are connected to municipalities, which include small houses for year round living and summerhouses. In Sweden there are more than 850,000 of such houses, and more than half of these do not fulfil the demands in the Environmental Code on wastewater treatment. Calculations show that phosphorus emission from single sewer systems are as big as all the municipal wastewater treatment plants altogether.
– Bioptech offers a way to close a substantial part of the phosphorus cycle and supply the agriculture industry with sustainable production of fertiliser while reducing eutrophication, says Richard Englund, Cleantech Inn Sweden. There is a significant growth potential in this new kind of active filters and we look forward to supporting Bioptech on that journey.
For more information, please contact
Richard Englund, Director Cleantech Inn Sweden
richard.englund@cleantechinn.se, +46 (0) 70-379 16 45
Anders Norén, CEO Bioptech AB
anders.noren@bioptech.se, +46 (0)70 - 687 87 14
Cleantech Inn Sweden is a catalyst for profitable growth in cleantech innovation with a mission to reach a sustainable society. Organised as an independent expert group, Cleantech Inn Sweden offers services to innovation companies, global enterprises and the public sector. Cleantech Inn Sweden is operated by Teknopol AB and is funded by Tillväxtverket, Vinnova, Västra Götalandsregionen and Region Skåne.
www.cleantechinn.se