The City of York (PA) and Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc. will officially unveil their new Nutrient Recovery Facility at the York Wastewater Treatment Plant (York WWTP) September 16. The facility uses Ostara’s Pearl® Nutrient Recovery Process to recover nutrients such as phosphorus and ammonia from the York WWTP’s wastewater stream to produce an environmentally-friendly, slow release fertilizer, marketed as Crystal Green®.
The opening ceremony will showcase a unique public/private partnership where Ostara has designed, built and financed the nutrient recovery facility for a monthly treatment fee, which will help York WWTP efficiently meet their nutrient limits and reduce operational costs. These nutrient recovery benefits are provided without the City of York having to make any capital investment in the system. Furthermore, revenues from the sale of Crystal Green fertilizer produced at the plant are shared with the City of York thereby further improving the economics of the facility.
Ostara’s Nutrient Recovery Facility is the second nutrient recovery system of its kind in the nutrient sensitive Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The first facility opened at Hampton Roads Sanitation District’s Nansemond Wastewater Treatment Plant in May 2010. During a pilot study, conducted at the York WWTP in spring 2008, it was found that the Pearl® process recovered more than 90 per cent of the phosphorus and 20 per cent of the nitrogen that would normally be returned back to the plant from the solids processing.
About Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc.:
Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc. designs, builds and sells a new generation of water treatment systems – a nutrient recovery solution that creates value from waste by removing nutrients from wastewater and transforming them into revenue-generating, environmentally-friendly commercial fertilizer, called Crystal Green®. Ostara is backed by VantagePoint Venture Partners in the U.S. and Frog Capital in the UK. In September 2010, Ostara was named a 2011 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and one of the Top 100 Global CleanTech Companies by The Guardian, a London-based media group, in 2009. For more information: visit www.ostara.com and www.crystalgreen.com.
About the York Wastewater Treatment Plant:
The York WWTP provides wastewater services for more than 75,000 residents in municipalities including York City, Spring Garden Township, North York Borough, West York Borough, West Manchester Township, Manchester Township and York Township. The York WWTP has a design capacity of more than 26 million gallons per day (MGD) and employs biological nutrient removal to meet the strict discharge limits required in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.