Techno- economic assessment of the commercial viability of the REFLOW fertilizers

The adoption of technology for fertilizer recovery from phosphorus rich dairy wastewater is rare. I hypothesize that uncertainty is a crucial adoption barrier. The recovery of phosphorus addresses environmental damages due to runoff and phosphorus scarcity. Research in of technical issues is developed, while economic investment is not well understood, This work therefore combines different methods to investigate the investment into dairy processing wastewater (DPWW) fertilizer recovery with the aim of identifying adoption barriers. Uncertainty is involved in the investment, as returns depend on different stochastic factors (e. g. DPWW quantities vary with milk production; stochastic input and output prices and policy environment). The first objective will review technical literature regarding pecuniary costs and benefits. The second objective will feature a simulation model of the investment to quantify uncertainty. The third objective will use dynamic stochastic decision programming to analyze how uncertainty can lead to investment hesitancy. The fourth objective considers the potential of policy measures to increase adoption. The results will guide further study of adoption and technology development.