A new partnership between NRU and CNP will give wastewater treatment facilities the greatest ability to recover phosphorus during anaerobic digestion as brushite and struvite minerals, thus creating the greatest process efficiency improvements and two valuable agricultural fertilizers.
Nutrient Recovery and Upcycling (NRU) LLC based in Madison, Wisconsin, is pleased to announce that on March 23rd, NRU signed an agreement with CNP – Technology Water and Biosolids Corporation, a division of Centrisys Corporation, both based in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The agreement made CNP the licensee for NRU’s patented brushite-based phosphorus recovery technology based on research started at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in exchange for worldwide royalties on the license. Naming rights for the process were also assigned and CNP will market the brushite technology as CalPrex™. Also agreed was that CNP would become the fourth member of NRU, along with founders Menachem Tabanpour, NRU president, Phillip Barak, NRU science director, and Mauricio Avila, NRU technical director and agricultural consultant.
Centrisys is a USA manufacturer of decanter centrifuges that are required for NRU’s technology and CNP markets a phosphorus recovery technology called AirPrex® that, together with CalPrex, will extract phosphorus at the beginning and end of the digestion process at wastewater treatment plants. “The brushite recovery process perfectly complements CNP’s AirPrex struvite recovery technology. When combined, CalPrex + AirPrex offers treatment plants the highest phosphorus recovery option of any nutrient management technology available today,” said Gerhard Forstner, CNP President. NRU is expected to benefit from the reputation, marketing experience and engineering know-how of CNP and Centrisys in the wastewater sector. In addition to continuing to develop and market the CalPrex technology, NRU will continue work to bring its nitrogen recovery technology through the pilot stage to market.
“An informal collaboration between NRU, Centrisys and CNP started in 2013,” said Menachem Tabanpour, NRU’s president. “At our first pilot test, the Centrisys team partnered with NRU to dewater sludge from the acid phase digester, which many believed to be impossible at the time. We are confident that the synergy between the CNP product line and Centrisys’ expertise in solids handling will accelerate the application of CalPrex into the market.”
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Learn more about Nutrient Recovery & Upcycling LLC at www.nrutech.com