Over the past years, research on technologies to recover nutrients from human excreta and domestic wastewater has intensified to such an extent that it has become difficult even for researchers in the field to keep track of new developments. In 2019, Harder and colleagues published a paper in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology that aimed to provide a synthesis of available and proposed nutrient recovery pathways, covering both processes and products rendered by treatment.
The idea was to highlight broad patterns and opportunities in the field as a whole, so as to facilitate cross-fertilization not only among the various engineering groups that work on nutrient recovery, but also between these groups and other research communities in related fields. Two years after its publication, our ‘SAN2AGRI’ paper received the journal’s 2021 Best Paper Award, which is based on the most-cited and most-read papers during the past two years as well as the overall quality of the papers.
The award came very timely as we are currently in the process of building an online evidence tool for navigating best evidence from science and practice on nutrient recovery and reuse. Conceptually, this online evidence tool draws heavily from the work presented in the SAN2AGRI paper. In terms of evidence, the online tool draws both from the SAN2AGRI paper and a parallel synthesis effort by the Bonus Return project (2017-2020) led by Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). For details on our new joint evidence synthesis project please check our End-of-wastewater project website.
Harder R, Wielemaker R, Larsen T, Zeeman G, Öberg G. 2019. Recycling nutrients contained in human excreta to agriculture: Pathways, processes, and products. Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology.
Contact: Robin Harder