Fernando Calvet Prats Award for the Environmental Biotechnology Group

The Environmental Biotechnology Group of the Interdisciplinary Center for Research in Environmental Technologies of the USC (CRETUS) has won the 'Fernando Calvet Prats' award for a successful case of technology transfer awarded by the Royal Galician Academy of Sciences (RAGC) in collaboration with the Galician Innovation Agency (Gain).

The USC team coordinated by Juan Manuel Garrido, and in which Dafne Crutchik from the Adolfo Ibáñez University of Santiago de Chile also participated, developed a procedure for the recovery of phosphorus in wastewater. “Legislation requires it to be removed from wastewater treatment plants,” explains Garrido, “but it is possible to recover it and reuse it as a useful substance. Among the phosphorus components, struvite stands out, with high fertilizing power for agriculture."