Assessment of the significance of heavy metals, pesticides and other contaminants in recovered products from water resource recovery facilities

The recovery of valuable materials from municipal water resource recovery facilities (WRRF) is a promising option to implement circular economy in wastewater treatment. Different technologies are being evaluated at different WRRF to recover products such as struvite, bioplastics and cellulose. However, the quality of these recovered products remains to be assessed in terms of their possible contamination with various hazardous compounds that may compromise their application in agriculture or construction. The aim of this article is therefore to assess the quality of products recovered from various recovery techniques implemented at demonstration sites. The results obtained for heavy metals, pesticides, chloroalkanes and PAHs from the analysis of 15 recovered products are reported and compared to the closest regulation framework possible. In general, the results showed that the products met current regulations and only some of them slightly exceeded the limits for very specific pollutants and only for a specific use, such as the food industry. These results are promising to accelerate the market penetration of these recovered products. However, this work highlights the need for a novel regulatory framework for these products that fits with its current uses.