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Updated: Apr 15, 2026

Supercritical Nitrogen Processing for the Purification of Reactive Porous Materials
Published on: May 15, 2015
Can direct conversion of used nitrogen to new feed and protein help feed the world?
Silvio Matassa1,2, Damien J Batstone3,4, Tim Hülsen3,4
1†Laboratory of Microbial Ecology and Technology (LabMET), Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, 9000 Gent, Belgium.
Abstract:
The increase in the world population, vulnerability of conventional crop production to climate change, and population shifts to megacities justify a re-examination of current methods of converting reactive nitrogen to dinitrogen gas in sewage and waste treatment plants. Indeed, by up-grading treatment plants to factories in which the incoming materials are first deconstructed to units such as ammonia, carbon dioxide and clean minerals, one can implement a highly intensive and efficient microbial resynthesis process in which the used nitrogen is harvested as microbial protein (at efficiencies close to 100%). This can be used for animal feed and food purposes. The technology for recovery of reactive nitrogen as microbial protein is available but a change of mindset needs to be achieved to make such recovery acceptable.
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