Phosphorus is a valuable, non-renewable resource in agriculture promoting crop growth. and is used in the global food chain, mainly as fertilizer. Soluble phosphorus plays a part in the eutrophication in freshwater environments, which impacts tourism, human health, environmental safety, and property values. Phosphorus loss from agricultural land is also a loss of investment that went into keeping it on the soil, and its addition into water bodies can increase costs to manage the affected area(s). This research entails selecting the phosphorus adsorption media best suited for removing phosphorus from subsurface drainage in Michigan farms. Selected adsorption media from the literature includes engineered nanomaterials, biochar, and natural materials. These media were evaluated with typical subsurface drainage phosphorus concentrations using batch adsorption and column experiments to verify if the media worked in this application. Both the steel furnace slag (SFS) and PO4Sponge removed soluble reactive phosphorus from 0.500 to below 0.05 mg/L in column experiments at an empty bed contact time of 5-minutes The SFS was the most cost-effective option based on a case-study and generalized analysis. The most expensive option was the use of PO4Sponge media to remove phosphorus, then regenerating it at the manufacturer.
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