Global food production relies on the use of phosphate fertilizers for the treatment of crops. About 80 percent of the mined phosphate ends up in fertilizers, pesticides and animal feeds, but almost half of this is lost through soil leaching and erosion. Tile drainage is used on many poorly drained agricultural fields to extend growing seasons and increase crop yields. Phosphate loading in tile drainage represents 30 to 50 percent of the total phosphate-runoff from agricultural fields, resulting in water eutrophication which has severe consequences on the environment and aquatic ecosystem.

The Clarkson team will develop a sorbent and field-ready filtration system to capture and recover phosphate from tile drainage and reduce the phosphate burden to watersheds. The recovered phosphate can be further used as a fertilizer, and provide a renewable supply and economic opportunities to farmers.

This process will significantly decrease environmental impact and provide a renewable phosphate supply, improving sustainability of agricultural practices. The project will for the first time extend the use of a nanotechnology innovation to develop a large-scale field-ready phosphate recovery process and implement it into agricultural practices to mitigate consequences of nutrient pollution. This technology can be useful to farmers, the environmental community and agricultural practitioners, looking for solutions to improve cost and sustainability of their practices.

The team acknowledges Clarkson’s investment in this project through a Clarkson Ignite (2019) fellowship (Karel Czanderna '77 and Dan Shirkey ‘80) and a Clarkson-SUNY-ESF Center of Excellence (CoE) seed grant which enabled the team to obtain preliminary data to demonstrate potential of their nanotechnology innovation for mitigating nutrient pollution.