Abstract

In the current international context characterized by the tendency to stricter limits for phosphorous (P) concentration in treated wastewater and a strong drive towards phosphate recovery, it is crucial to develop cost-effective technologies to remove and recover phosphate from municipal wastewater (MWW). This dataset, produced in the framework of the Horizon Europe “MAR2PROTECT” project, contains data related to the screening of the phosphate adsorption performances of 9 sorbents including several hydrotalcites. The studied sorbents were: “Pural 70” and “Pural 50”, provided by Sasol, in their commercial form and after calcination at 500 °C for 5 h (“calcined Pural 70” and “calcined Pural 50”); “calcined Pural 70” after impregnation with Fe2O3 (“Calcined Pural 70 + Fe2O3”); “FerroSorp® Plus”; the commercial “HAIX LayneRT”; “Pyroaurite”, a hydrotalcite that has iron as constituent synthesized internally at the University of Bologna, before and after calcination (“calcined Pyroaurite”). The screening was conducted with actual MWW and with a saline MWW deriving from a hotspot of seawater intrusion and led to the selection of calcined Pyroaurite - an innovative material composed of mixed Mg/Fe oxides - as the best-performing sorbent. In particular, the dataset includes data about the physical-chemical properties of the effluents and sorbents used in the tests and data about isotherms and continuous-flow adsorption/desorption tests conducted with the studied sorbents, including the outcomes of some model simulations of the proposed process.