8-05: Filamentous phosphorus accumulating fungus and its application to recover phosphorus from wastewater

High quality phosphorus rock for fertilizer production is predicted to be depleted in 50 to 100 years under current rate of excavation. The increasing cost of extraction and refinement of poor phosphorus rock and the rising demands for food production boosts the price of phosphorus fertilizer. Recovering phosphorus from agricultural and municipal wastewater provides a sustainable method for the fertilizer production. While bacteria are well studied in polyphosphate accumulation and widely implemented in phosphorus removal process in wastewater treatment plants, filamentous fungus is actually less investigated. A recent study on soybean root soil samples revealed several filamentous fungal strains with capability to accumulate up to 6% of intracellular polyphosphate in their cell biomass. Compared with bacteria, these filamentous fungi have the advantage of being easy to harvest and thus show promise in phosphorus recovery. In this study, these filamentous fungal species were studied on their capability of polyphosphate accumulation on different wastewater streams, including synthetic wastewater, anaerobically digested manure and municipal wastewater. The phosphorus is recovered as storage in the cell biomass, in the form of polyphosphate, which has high purity and density. The whole fungal cell biomass can be transported to phosphorus deficient area with relatively low cost, providing a possible solution to the problem of phosphorus fertilizer industry.