Southern Water’s involvement in NEREUS focuses, in different stages of the project, on nutrient recovery and water reuse.

Recovering nutrients from wastewater

The original focus of Southern Water’s involvement in the project was to assess nutrient recovery opportunities and the tangible impact of this to the business. Additionally, this would enable the organisation to translate trial outputs onto other works within the SWS network and provide learning for the wider industry.

The trials were undertaken on a sidestream at Peel Common Wastewater Treatment works, which services a population of 250,000 people from the South East of England. Southern Water investigated and tested the possibility to recover calcium phosphate (for use as a fertilizer base product or other more valuable products), struvite (as fertilizer), heavy metals, cellulose and bio-polymers.