Team:Manchester/Entrepreneurship
Phosphostore
Executive Summary
The current market for phosphorus removal techniques is growing rapidly as more and more countries set increasingly stricter regulations on the effluent quality. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) all over the world are looking for a dependable, sustainable and cheap solution. Our product allows companies to achieve phosphorus removal levels expected by the legislation in force. Additionally, our solution is the only one that allows to recycle the recovered phosphorus, thus preserving this agriculturally valuable resource. Our team have engineered phosphorus accumulating based on the newest research made by Martin Warren et al. as documented in the 2017 paper. Our team are planning to target WWTPs in Canada specifically, as we believe it is the best place to set up our business. As the threat of decreasing phosphorus reserves deepens and inland lake and rivers eutrophication continues, the demand for our Phosphostore Solution, which not only removes phosphorus out of water but also recycles it back, will undoubtedly increase.
Customer Analysis
In most of the developed countries, wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are legally obliged to meet limits on phosphorus discharged to receiving water bodies. [REF] Very often, these WWTPs have to choose between stable and efficient yet very costly chemical phosphorus removal methods and more unstable, slightly inefficient yet cheaper biological phosphorus removal methods. [REF] Their choice is usually dictated by the legal limits set on the allowed phosphorus concentration levels in the effluent; more stringent regulations often prompt WWTPs to choose chemicals-heavy phosphorus removal systems, we learned through discussing these issues with Aqua Enviro, a leading water consultancy company. [REF]
Through talking to Aqua Enviro, we learned that wastewater legislations have tremendous impacts on the type of phosphorus removal technology used, on the thoroughness of wastewater treatment and on the way wastewater industry as a whole develops
Having realised the importance of legislations in the development of the wastewater sector, our team have decided to approach the task of researching biology-related laws with a global perspective in mind. To this end, we have established a global collaboration including teams from 10 countries and 5 continents; participating teams were based in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, England, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and the US. Each team have researched GMM legislations in their country and shared their findings and impressions with the rest by contributing to a shared document. As a result, we have managed to analyse multiple markets, which has, in turn, directed us to set up our Phosphostore business model in Canada, where we concluded the legislative approach towards GMMs is both safe and open as our collaborative friends convinced us.
Leading this iGEM Collaboration has expanded our understanding of GMM laws around the world, which in turn, helped us choose Canada as the best place to set up our Phosphstore business plan
Our envisaged customers are specifically Canadian WWTPs which use biological phosphorus removal methods. We chose to target Canadian WWTPs for a number of reasons. Firstly, a critical part of the technology we use to accumulate phosphorus in a bacterial microcompartment has a number of associated patents in the EU and the US [REF; Link to IP document]; as such, we would not have a lot of freedom to operate in those two territories. Additionally, the EU and US are the two largest markets for biotechnology, given the number of patents granted in the areas. Thus, we suspect that any associated patents may possibly hinder our freedom to operate in those two territories in the future. Secondly, our technology is compatible mainly with biological phosphorus removal methods, especially EBPR method (explained below), which happens to be widely used throughout Central and Western Canada. [REF] Thirdly, there is plenty of information on Canadian wastewater treatment systems, which facilitates market research. Finally, in 2012, Canada established first national standards for wastewater treatment, which set fairly strict limits of 1mg/l of phosphorus concentration in discharged water. [REF] This might additionally increased the demand for efficient phosphorus removal methods in the future.
Our extensive research on the Intellectual Property Rights has prompted us to choose Canada for a place to set up a business. This decision was also supported by the favourable characteristics of Canadian WWTPs and recent legal developments.
Canadian EBPR WWTPs usually operate in municipalities in Western Canada, including Prairies and central British Columbia. [REF] These WWTPs have to comply to Water Quality Guidelines adopted by Canadian Government as well as to the regulations set by the relevant province. British Columbia as well as Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba (Prairies) have all adopted a limit of 1mg/l of TP in discharged water. [REF] These WWTPs need stable and effective yet inexpensive phosphorus removal methods, which would allow them to meet the limits set by the regulations.
Competitor Analysis
In most of the cases, WWTPs have their own systems for removing or recycling phosphorus. Thus, an industry for providing WWTPs with these services is almost non-existent. In other words, there is nearly no competition that Phosphostore would have to face. As a technology which removes and recycles phosphorus, however, Phosphostore would be still indirectly competing against currently used methods for these processes. Let us compare Phosphostore to the other two most commonly used phosphorus removal technologies: Chemical Precipitation and Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal (EBPR).
Our Phosphostore Solution would be indirectly competing against two other most commonly used phosphorus remval methods: chemical precipitation and enhanced biological phosphorus removal.
Operation & Maintenance Costs (O&M) are by far the highest when using chemical precipitation, as the amount of chemicals used in the process is enormous [REF]. In addition, sludge that results from the treatment has to be processed further to ensure safety for public. This is the major reason behind the gradual shift towards EBPR, which has the lowest O&M costs [REF]. EBPR employs naturally occurring phosphate-accumulating organisms which filter incoming wastewater in a series of different stages. As of now, Phosphostore would lose on the O&M costs to EBPR as our technology employs genetically modified organisms which require additional machinery operation costs to minimize direct contact with the wastewater. In addition, our GMOs would have to be cultured in a separate vessel through a continuous culture system to avoid contact with other bacterial species. As a solution, we have discussed and thought of alternative synthetic biology strategies that may help to reduce the cost of Phosphostore.
We have modelled a rough estimation for the production cost of our system. The estimation only accounts for the substrate and medium used to grow the bacteria. From our calculation, it costs $1.33 to produce 1 kg of bacteria and $0.76 to treat wastewater containing 7.3g of phosphate in 48 hours. To estimate the cost to treat wastewater for a year, we used Davyhulme Treatment Works, the biggest wastewater treatment works in North West England, as a case study. We found that it would cost £550 million to treat the amount of wastewater that goes through Davyhulme which is about 30,000 liter of wastewater per second.
Capital investment of the major equipments, processing cost, and utility construction of 5 stainless steel fermentors with a volume of 177,000 L is equivalent to $27 million (Maiorella, Blanch and Wilke, 1984). These values are obtained from an estimated cost of a simple continuous fermentation for ethanol production. Maintenance cost is 3% of capital at around $810,000. Therefore, it will cost roughly $28 million to set up the system during the first year in addition to the annual cost to treat wastewater.
Phosphate that is recovered from our bacteria can be reused as fertilizer for agriculture usage. Assuming that the fertilizer is sold at the same average market cost of Diammonium Phosphate (DAP), the most widely used phosphate fertilizer, the recovered material can provide a revenue of $2.4 million, which is about 8.6% of initial capital investment.
Efficiency measures the extent to which a given method is able to remove phosphorus out of water. Chemical precipitation usually achieves total phosphorus removal down to 0.3 mg/l. As such, it is the only viable phosphorus removal method for sensitive water areas, which have exceedingly strict legal limits [REF]. EBPR is able to reduce total phosphorus levels to 0.5-1 mg/l, which is sufficient for most of the Canadian WWTPs’ needs. Our Phopshostore method, which involves the use of bacterial microcompartments, can achieve results slightly better than EBPR method yet significantly worse than chemical precipitation.
Predictability Both EBPR and Phosphostore are harder to predict and model compared to chemical precipitation as they depend on live organisms. Chemical precipitation methods rely on predicting chemistry and as such can be predicted very consistently whereas both biological methods rely on predicting complex biological interactions. The increased number of variables inherent in the EBPR and Phosphostore processes prevents them from ever being as predictable as chemical methods. Current EBPR methods incorporate the use of phosphate accumulating organisms which cannot be cultured in isolation. As such, EBPR has proven to be difficult to model and is often temperamental in practice [REF]. This can lead to unexpected phosphate releases in the effluent. Hence, synthetic biology approaches such as Phosphostore are better suited because it applies mathematical modelling to predict the behavior of an organism that has been tuned for a specific purpose. At the moment, Phosphostore employs Escherichia coli, a model bacterial organism that has been studied extensively in the past decades, as a chassis for the system. As an example of predictability, we have modelled an operon for our system that controls and regulates the expression of microcompartments within the cell [LINK TO MODELLING]. Our model has shown that the operon successfully downregulate microcompartment formation under a certain phosphate concentration. Thus, future work would allow prediction of our system for different specific purposes.
Sludge Production Volume Chemical precipitation produces the most sludge as the process is based on adding more chemicals into the mixed liquor. EBPR and Phosphostore result in very similar sludge production volume; however, Phosphostore directly removes phosphorus out of the mixed liquor, which is why we decided to place it higher in the ranking. Higher sludge production is usually undesired by the WWTPs [REF] as it requires them to dump the waste somewhere, which is why, as a general rule, the higher sludge production volume, the bigger problems it creates for the WWTPs.
Our visit to the Davyhulme Wastewater Treatment Plant taught us, however, that in some cases, higher sludge production volumes could also be desired. The stuff explained that sludge incineration allows for on-site energy production, which is how Davyhulme powered over 50% of its processes. At times, Davyhulme would also sell phosphorus rich sludge as biosolids to the local farmers, which further increased their profits. As a result, we realised it is very hard to give a clear verdict as to which methods give rise to the best sludge outcomes due to the complexity of sludge treatment.
Environmental Sustainability Phosphostore achieves the highest level of environmental sustainability as it involves a chemical-free, stable and predictable solution. Furthermore, phosphorus recycling is an intrinsic part of the Phosphostore technology, as opposed to EBPR or chemical precipitation, both of which require additional steps for phosphorus recycling. EBPR takes the second place as it is still a chemical free method; however, it is less predictable than the other two and does not involve phosphorus recycling in its process. Chemical precipitation is clearly the least environmental friendly solution as it requires a lot of supplementary chemicals.
Phosphate that is recovered from our bacteria can be reused as fertilizer for agriculture usage. Assuming that the fertilizer is sold at the same average market cost of Diammonium Phosphate (DAP), the most widely used phosphate fertilizer, the recovered material can provide a revenue of $2.4 million, which is about 8% of initial capital investment.
