Estudio de Viabilidad del Proceso de Recuperación del Fósforo Contenido en las Aguas Residuales: Una Aproximación Económica

Abstract

Phosphorus is an essential, non-renewable resource and his discharged to the environment causes serious negative impacts. Therefore, phosphorus recovery from wastewater has become a necessity for sustainable development. Despite the scarcity of this element, nowadays the selling price of phosphate rock is lower than phosphorus recovery, which means that there are no economic incentives for the implementation of recovery technologies of this nutrient. This paper shows a methodology to assess the economic feasibility of wastewater phosphorus recovery project taking into account not just the internal impact, but also the external impact. For this, using the directional distance function the shadow price of phosphorus is estimated, which represents an approach to the environmental benefits obtained to prevent its discharge. Likewise, an empirical application of this methodology is carried out in a sample of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) that at present don´t have any treatment for phosphorus removal or recovery. The quantification and incorporation of the environmental benefit in the economic feasibility studies for phosphorus recovery projects shows that this process is viable not only from environmental point of view but also from an economic perspective.