Blog from the Environmental Engineering Research Group at SLU
My name is Oliver Pay. I am originally from the UK, but I now live in Finland and study environmental engineering at Tampere University of Applied Sciences, where I have just finished my second year. At SLU, I will be part of the urine drying research team. My responsibilities at SLU are to research efficiencies of urine drying systems, and to determine how long a system can be used before there needs to be chemical replacement. I will be here until the end of July this year.
On the 13th of April a seminar on How to squeeze fat into a sustainable food future was organised by TABLE and SLU Future Food. Cecilia presented on using insects for fat production. Turns out her insects actually are quite good at synthesising fat; could they play a role in closing the fat gap? The fat gap is the gap between the total amount of fat needed for humanities nutritional needs and how much that is actually being produced. If you want to find out more about this, have a listen to the seminar.
On the 7th of April Cecilia held a presentation on the SLU lunch seminar series Worth knowing about how waste management can be linked with food production with the help of Insects. The spring lectures in the series can be seen here.
Jenna Senecal joined the Swedish Tech Delegation to Cape Town, South Africa during the end of April 2022. This was part of Cape Town / Stockholm Connect, which is an internationalization project and co-creation platform where the goal is to strengthen tech and investor ties between Sweden and South Africa. During the week, Jenna met with other Swedish companies looking at establishing in South Africa and several South African startups looking at their growth potential.
A highlight for Jenna was meeting Birger Lundgren and Michèle Spooner who are working hard to bring affordable and sustainable sanitation to schools (as a start!).
Here’s a new paper we published in Frontiers in Environmental Science: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2022.889119/full
In the study, we systematically analysed the kinetics and thermodynamics of how magnesium hydroxide dissolves in different types of human urine (fresh urine and fresh urine concentrated by evaporation). We showed that Mg hydroxide has a unique dissolution behaviour which is unlike that of other alkaline earth hydroxides, especially when water is removed from urine. We detail conditions and design criteria for alkalising and for dehydrating urine, which is useful when developing source-separating sanitation systems.
A cool aspect of the study was that we found a smart way to simulate the kinetics of how fast Mg hydroxide dissolves, how fast various precipitates form (e.g. struvite, apatite), and how fast urine is alkalised and saturated. We did this by matching the experimentally measured pH of urine with its thermodynamically simulated pH. This approach could be applied to any system as long as the parameter we measure is something we can also simulate thermodynamically.
On the 20th of April, Abdulhamid (Abood) Aliahmad had his one-year follow-up seminar.The presentation focused on the findings of the first study and inputs from the second study.
The first study focuses on evaluating whether the current state of knowledge concerning urine recycling technologies is sufficient to facilitate upscaling development and increased diffusion. Knowledge development and diffusion is a key function in the development of technological innovation systems (TIS). The study proposes a multi-criteria framework, together with bibliometric analysis to conduct such evaluation. The second study will follow up on this one examining other functions of the TIS.
He preliminary concluded that urine recycling TIS has the tendency for strong publication rate growth and diffusion between countries. However, the function still has insufficiency in some criteria. The analysis identified the lack of innovation in scientific research and the lack of diversification of emerging technologies into the TIS as weak elements. The frequency of research publication and pilot-scale implementations on each technology shall be higher.
He also included the proposed approaches for his next two studies. The seminar ended with many interesting questions and discussions.
If you want to know more about his research, click here.
The SLU Drying team travelled to Gotland join Jenna Senecal (Sanitation360), Johannes Obermeier (Brewmaster, Gotlands Bryggeri), and the Science Park Gotland team to take part in the tasting of beer brewed at Gotlands Bryggeri. This special event evaluated the quality of barley that was grown last summer (2021) on Gotland with urine fertilizer. The Master Brewer was happy with the results!
This is part of a three year project called Växtnäringskretslopp till uthållig ölproduktion (N2 Brew for short) that is looking into the service chain of recycling urine as a fertilizer. Urine contains the same nutrients used to grow the food that we consume – in better managing the natural resource found in our wastewater, we can build a circular economy while protecting water quality. This beer is not for sale, but keep posted about how the next brew from 2022 barley harvest preforms.
This month Kretsloppsteknik’s Cecilia Lalander and Björn Vinnerås published an editorial in Journal of Insects as Food and Feed about the hindrances that exist in the EU that prevent a true insect based closed-loop circular economy in the EU. The opportunity to write an editorial in JIFF comes as of Cecilia being one of the associated editors of the journal. Please, read the full editorial if you want to find out what actions we believe are needed for achieving a circular insect food production system in the EU.
This Friday, on 8th of April, Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is hosting its 1st seminar as a part of mini-series that focus on Sustainable Sanitation Solutions. Here, Håkan Jönsson and Jennifer McConvile will talk about safe and sustainable ways to recover nutrients, water and energy from sanitation systems. The seminar will take place at SLU but can also be attended digitally.
If you are interested in finding out more about EWB and upcoming seminar(s), click here.
Last week the Black Soldier Fly lab hosted a study visit for 25 students from the SLU Youth institute with a mix of Swedish, Bulgarian, Slovenian and Spanish students. We discussed the worldwide issue of waste generation, its impact on the environment, the globally increasing need for protein and the possibility to produce protein from waste. Black soldier fly composting will continue to be a valuable option to both reduce organic wastes and produce protein.
If you want to know more contact Viktoria Wiklicky and Cecilia Lalander
