A significant increase in phosphorus-rich dairy wastewater coincides with a decrease in the availability of fossil phosphate rock resources in Europe. This confluence of events has led to the development of technologies for phosphorus recovery from dairy wastewater. This study aims to inform and guide such development with regard to life cycle environmental impacts prior to their implementation in dairy contexts. With the lack of inventory data at this point and the non-existence of earlier life cycle assessments on the use of phosphorus recovery technologies in a dairy context in literature, we performed a meta-analysis where we extracted and compared published results on life cycle environmental impacts from two fields (1) dairy industries, with a focus on the dairy wastewater treatment and (2) phosphorus recovery technologies in a municipal wastewater treatment context. The results show that despite its intended effect, normal dairy wastewater treatment in many cases still contributes significantly to eutrophication. Most of the phosphorus recovery technologies examined here exhibited a lower global warming potential and cumulative energy demand than those of dairy wastewater treatment processes. It indicates that problem shifting could be avoided when phosphorus recovery is introduced. However, no technologies involving incineration have had the impact of acidification reported which represents a potential knowledge gap since impacts are expected related to incineration emissions. A comparison between the extracted data for phosphorus recovery technologies shows that there are lower impacts related to technologies that recover phosphorus from the liquid phase, than from sludge or ash.

富含磷的乳制品废水的显着增加与欧洲化石磷酸盐岩资源的减少相吻合。这些事件的汇合导致了从乳制品废水中回收磷的技术的发展。本研究旨在在乳制品环境中实施之前，就生命周期环境影响方面的发展提供信息和指导。由于此时缺乏库存数据，并且文献中不存在关于在乳制品环境中使用磷回收技术的早期生命周期评估，我们进行了荟萃分析，提取并比较了已发表的关于生命周期环境的结果来自两个领域的影响 (1) 乳制品行业，重点关注乳制品废水处理和 (2) 市政废水处理环境中的磷回收技术。结果表明，尽管有预期的效果，但在许多情况下，正常的乳品废水处理仍然会显着促进富营养化。与乳品废水处理工艺相比，此处研究的大多数磷回收技术表现出较低的全球变暖潜势和累积能源需求。这表明引入磷回收可以避免问题转移。然而，没有任何涉及焚烧的技术报告了酸化的影响，这代表了潜在的知识差距，因为预计影响与焚烧排放有关。