Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Covalently Functionalized Sawdust For The Remediation Of Phosphate From Agricultural Wastewater, Daniel Meister, David Ure, Angela Awada, Jean-Claude Barrette, Joel Gagnon, Bluent Mutus, John F. Trant

Chemistry and Biochemistry Publications

Phosphate remediation from wastewater is rapidly becoming an ever more attractive process due to a combination of both the economic pressure of increasing phosphate scarcity and the environmental damage caused by untreated agricultural runoff. Ideally, remediated phosphate will be recoverable and would be able to be reused as fertilizer. Many different resins have been investigated, but due to the scale of the challenge, any feasible solution will involve the use of very inexpensive waste products as the solid support. Sawdust, functionalized with iron-binding ligands, is such a potential resin. Sawdust alone binds 0.3 g/kg of phosphate which is insufficient. Iron …