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Juho Uzkurt Kaljunen, an alum of the School of Engineering at Aalto University, has received the Doctoral Thesis of the Year prize awarded by Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland (TEK) and Tekniska Föreningen i Finland (TFiF). The thesis prize was awarded in Helsinki today for the 26th time. 

He completed his doctoral studies in Department of Built Environment, Water and Environmental Engineering research group. In his thesis, Uzkurt Kaljunen investigated methods to cost-effectively recover nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater, as well as phosphorus from sludge. The supervising professor of the winning thesis was Assistant Professor Anna Mikola and the thesis advisor was Postdoctoral Researcher Raed Al-Juboori from the Aalto University School of Engineering.

Nutrients from waste streams recovered and used as fertilizers

According to Uzkurt Kaljunen, there are so many nutrients in our wastewater that they could replace a significant proportion of mineral fertilizers. This would reduce the dependence of Finnish agriculture on imports of Russian fertilizers and improve our food security. Nitrogen and phosphorus are important nutrients for crops.

In 2016, he ended up working on a thesis for the NPHarvest project, supported by the Ministry of Environment, on the topic of nutrient recovery. When the thesis was completed, the project had a vacancy for a PhD researcher and work continued.

‘The further the dissertation and technology progressed, the more obvious it became that this had commercial potential’, he says.

‘Juho's NPHarvest study is an excellent example of how research can have a big positive impact on a big problem in the world. Juho's goal from the start was to get the process into a large scale deployment and enterprise. Aalto University's PhD path was a great way to prepare for entrepreneurship, but yes Juho's own determined attitude to improving the world was the most important thing’, Assistant Professor and and thesis advisor Anna Mikola says.

Entrepreneurship is about challenges and successes

NPHarvest is now a one-year-old startup. The company is based on a project already completed by the water researchers at Aalto University in which they developed the NPHarvest process. 

‘Perhaps the biggest leap on my path has been to finally embrace the entrepreneurial mindset, because we didn't want innovation to be confined to the academic level. The first year has gone well, and a big thanks goes to the founding team, investors and my old colleagues at Aalto University's Water House’, Uzkurt Kaljunen says.

NPHarvest is currently aiming to complete the testing equipment and then rent them out for reference and later also sell them to customers. The company’s customers could include biogas plants, wastewater treatment plants and farms. In the future, the company wants to develop the market for recycled fertilizers, which are still in their infancy according to Uzkurt Kaljunen.

Uzkurt Kaljunen’s thesis will also be useful for developing wastewater treatment systems and optimising costs. He explains that the costs and environmental emissions of conventional wastewater treatment can be reduced by recovering nutrients from wastewater. Phosphorus, for example, causes eutrophication in bodies of water.

‘This thesis presents a method for bringing nutrients to market as safe circular economy products, but that in itself is not enough. This requires a lot of market development, logistics and the development of agricultural practices before a significant change can be achieved,’ he says.

Each year TEK and TFiF hand out a prize for the best doctoral thesis in the technical field as recognition for a high-quality thesis that has either significantly promoted, or is expected to promote technical expertise in Finland. The scientific and technical novelty value and applicability of the research results are also taken into account. The value of the prize is € 7500.

Our warmest congratulations to Juho Uzkurt Kaljunen!

Link to the thesis:

 

More information:

Juho Uzkurt Kaljunen
juho@npharvest.fi 

Anna Mikola
Assistant Professor and thesis advisor
Aalto University
anna.mikola@aalto.fi