Gwinnett commissioners, in partnership with Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies, on Wednesday, Oct. 21, officially opened a nutrient recovery facility at their F. Wayne Hill Water Reclamation Center, the county’s largest wastewater treatment facility.
The nutrient recovery process will help protect freshwater lakes, such as Lake Lanier, by recovering phosphorus and other nutrients from the wastewater streams and transforming them into an environmentally responsible fertilizer, marketed as Crystal Green.
Overall, the Ostara system, known as the Pearl process, will recover more than 85 percent of the phosphorus and 40 percent of the nitrogen from nutrient rich process streams before they accumulate as struvite on pipes and equipment.
Using two of Ostara’s Pearl 2000 reactors, Gwinnett County’s nutrient recovery facility has an annual Crystal Green production capacity of up to 1,400 tons. The county will receive revenue for every ton of fertilizer it produces. In addition, the nutrient recovery facility will create annual cost savings in chemicals, solid waste disposal, maintenance and power.
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