Prospect of Seawater Utilization as a Source of Magnesium for Struvite Synthesis from Distillery Wastewater for Sustainable Resource Recovery

India, an agrarian country is totally dependent on import of phosphorus (P) for meeting its P demands, which therefore necessitates the recovery of P from wastewater to meet the fertilizer demand in a sustainable manner. The present study presents P recovery from nutrient-rich distillery wastewater through struvite precipitation by utilizing seawater as magnesium source. Struvite is a slow-release fertilizer comprising of Phosphorus (P), Nitrogen (N) and Magnesium (Mg). Experiments were conducted to optimize different dilutions of synthetic distillery wastewater (SDW) and seawater (SW). The percentage phosphate removal for dilutions (SDW + SW) of 90 + 10, 80 + 20, 70 + 30, 60 + 40 and 50 + 50 mL were 82.88%, 93.36%, 99.41%, 91.03% and 89.67% respectively. The corresponding yield of crystals were found to be 1.00 g/L, 1.79 g/L, 2.27 g/L, 1.77 g/L and 1.59 g/L for the afore-mentioned dilutions. The optimum dilution for maximum phosphate removal and maximum yield was observed to be 70 mL SDW and 30 mL of SW. This approach of utilizing the nutrient rich wastewater and seawater as a magnesium source for struvite synthesis presents an eco-friendly and sustainable technique for resource (N, P and Mg) recovery.