While phosphate is an essential nutrient in aquatic
environment; if it exist on excessive amounts it leads to a number of
environmental problems. The most severe of these problems would be eutrophication;
in simpler words: the depletion of oxygen in aquatic environments. Hydrous manganese oxide (HMO) is
currently used on water treatment plants to filter pollutants like arsenic, and
radium; HMO excels on its work against these chemicals, but struggles against
small anions like phosphate mostly because HMO is too bulky. They gave HMO a
liposuction by encapsulating it in beads called polystyrene anion exchangers. This
resulted in the new thinner HMO to successfully adsorb phosphate. Currently phosphate
is being adsorbed by chemical precipitations and biological process, but these
generate a sludge that needs further disposal. The only downside I see with
this prospect is that it must be dosed slowly, for too much would clog the
filtration process.
Reference:
Bingcai Pan, Feichao Han, Guangze Nie, Bing Wu, Kai He, and Lv Lu. 2014. New Strategy To Enhance Phosphate Removal from Water by Hydrous Manganese Oxide
Environmental Science & Technology 48 (9), 5101-5107
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