Category: English

Happy World Toilet Day!

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Today is all about toilets! Can you imagine how your life would be without one? They are a part of our lives so much, that we don’t even think about their existence.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for more than 3.6 billion people. They lack access to safe sanitation and their lives without a toilet are dirty, dangerous and undignified. Public health greatly depends on the toilets, as well as the improvements in gender equality, education, economics, and the environment. Our sustainable future cannot happen without them!

Each of us will spend around a year of their lives using a toilet, so if you have one, thank it and give it some love!

If you want to know more about how we can use toilets to create more sustainable future, please free to check out some of our research:

Happy Wold Toilet Day! 

Studyvisit from Kjell och MĂ€rta Beijers Stiftelse

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Cecilia Lalander from Kretsloppsteknik welcomed visitors from the Kjell and MĂ€rta Beijers Stiftelse at SLU campus in Ultuna. In the spotlight was the latest project “5 ton fish on the counter” (see blogpost from 04. March https://blogg.slu.se/kretsloppsteknik/2021/03/04/red-containers-at-campus/), where feed for trout was produced from insect meal at Campus Ultuna.

The visit was a great opportunity to show the groupÂŽs strong competences and relevance in regards of circular economy (wastemanagement and feed production). After a quick visit, the group hurried on to visit other research groups and get an insight to the wide and important research conducted at SLU.

The Kjell and MĂ€rta Beijer Foundation was founded in 1974 through a donation from Kjell and MĂ€rta Beijer. In addition to scientific research and education, the foundation supports culture, above all in connection with Swedish design and home furnishing tradition. Among other things, the foundation is behind the Beijer Institute, one of the world’s leading research centers in ecological economics. It had been a great day and Cecilia received a lot of interesting questions and also witnessed some of the visitors testing our dried larvae first hand!

Our BSF project “5 ton grön fisk i disk” featured in Dagens nyheter

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From February to May 2021, the project “5 ton grön fisk i disk” (partly financed by Vinnova) produced 1,7 tons of larvae on a mix of 10 tonnes vegetable and bread waste. The vegetables were discarded vegetable cuttings from

Sorunda Grönsakshallen and the bread was out-of-date Fazer bread from local supermarkets. The larv ae were not only produced at SLU campus but they were also further processed here: after drying at 60°C for 48 h, the dry larva were pressed in a screw press to separate the protein from the fat. The defatted protein meal was then turned into fish feed, containing many other locally sourced ingredients, for rainbow trout. The trout were grown by Älvdalslax in Dalarna.

The residue from the treatment, the frass, was used as soil amendment on the nearby student run permaculture garden. Dagens nyheter found out about this cool project and came to visit us. Jessica Ritzen followed Cecilia Lalander and Anders Kiessling through the different stages of the protein production for the 5 ton fish on the counter project. Read the full article here.

New publication from the urine dying group on the use of magnesium-doped alkaline substrates in the Chemical Engineering Journal

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In our latest paper, published in the Chemical Engineering Journal, we show how all the nitrogen in fresh human urine can be captured in the form of solid urine-based fertilisers.

Abstract: Recycling urine can reduce the flux of reactive nitrogen in the environment. This paper presents a novel approach to recover all N (Ntot) from urine, including ammonia (TAN; about 5% of Ntot), which is usually volatilised when alkalised urine is dehydrated. As analytical methods for measuring N have a standard deviation of at least 5%, real fresh urine was fortified with ammonia (urineN) or ammonia and phosphate (urineNP) so that TAN comprised 10% of Ntot. The urine was then added to different magnesium-based alkaline substrates (MgO, Mg(OH)2, MgCl2 + Mg(OH)2) and dried at 38 ˚C. Chemical speciation modelling suggested that, irrespective of the substrate, >98% of Ntot in urineNP was recovered and 86% of TAN was precipitated as struvite. Experimental results showed that < 90% of Ntot was recovered when urineNP was dried in MgO and Mg(OH)2, suggesting that no TAN was captured. However, all phosphorus and potassium and 93% (±5%) of Ntot and 30% of TAN were recovered when urineNP was dried in MgCl2 + Mg(OH)2, as the [Mg]:[NH4]:[PO4] molar ratio of 1.69:1.14:1.0 in urine favoured formation of struvite. Overall, this study demonstrated that all ammonia excreted in real fresh urine (unfortified, TAN < 5% Ntot) can be captured if urine is dried in substrates containing 3.7 g MgCl2·6H2O L−1 or 2.2 g MgSO4 L−1, but no calcium. Ammonia can also be captured if fresh urine is saturated with MgO or Mg(OH)2 with high reactivity (<60 s citric acid test). If the drying substrate has pH > 10 throughout the treatment, urease enzyme-catalysed degradation of urea to ammonia is prevented, resulting in complete recovery of all nutrients. The end-product is a solid fertiliser containing 10–11% nitrogen, 1–2% phosphorus and 2–3% potassium.

Continue reading New publication from the urine dying group on the use of magnesium-doped alkaline substrates in the Chemical Engineering Journal

Advertisement for MSc thesis: To source separate or to annamox? Can we mainstream two disruptive innovations in wastewater treatment in parallel?

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Proposed Title: To source separate or to annamox? Can we mainstream two disruptive innovations in wastewater treatment in parallel?

Credits: 30 credits; Level: Advanced
Subject: Technology, Environmental Science or Sustainable Development
Start: January 2022 or later

Two of the most exciting and potentially disruptive innovations that are being tested in the field of wastewater treatment are:

  • Source Separation, where different fractions of household wastewater (urine, faeces/brownwater, greywater) are separately collected at source and treated differently to recover and recycle resources (fertilizers like urea and struvite, water, energy, 
)
  • Annamox, oranaerobic ammonium oxidation, a naturally occurring microbial process which can be applied to remove nitrogen at centralised wastewater treatment plants by directly converting ammonia and nitrite to nitrogen gas.

Source-separation calls for distributed/decentralized treatment of wastewater and emphasizes the recovery of nutrients and resources. Annamox on the other hand calls for an upgrade on the existing biological nitrogen removal processes at centralized wastewater treatment plants. Both these innovations are currently being mainstreamed but little is known about –

  1. Whether these processes can complement each other, and if so, when? at what scale?
  2. In which context and settings are each of these innovations better suited?
  3. The overall energy requirements for treating wastewater through both processes, especially from a life-cycle perspective. e.g., annamox reduces the energy demand for aeration and nitrogen removal but source separation and nutrient recycling reduces the need to manufacture synthetic ammonia-based fertilizers (Haber Bosch nitrogen)
Continue reading Advertisement for MSc thesis: To source separate or to annamox? Can we mainstream two disruptive innovations in wastewater treatment in parallel?

New Formas project in the call From research to implementation for a sustainable society 2021

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Cecilia Lalander from the Department of Energy and Technology and Anders Kiessling from the Department of Animal Nutrition and Management are part of a project with partners from all over Sweden who have just been granted SEK 3.8 million from FORMAS for a pilot project in which artificial intelligence (AI) will support the development of a sustainable urban food production system.

Northern Sweden has recently attracted large industries and server halls as well as the next generation fossil-free steel industry (H2GreenSteel), due to its easy access to renewable energy and natural resources, as well as a cool climate. Boden municipality aims to be Europe’s most resource-efficient and carbon-neutral municipality by 2025. In fact, since 2020, Boden has initiated a large-scale symbiosis project called the Boden Energy Symbiosis, part of the Boden Business Park. In fact, since 2020 Boden has initiated a large-scale symbiosis project called the Boden Symbiosis Cluster, part of the Boden Business Park. One of the initiatives aim at creating an urban food competence platform of commercial size to be used as a national asset for implementing and testing innovative solutions for food production systems.

Continue reading New Formas project in the call From research to implementation for a sustainable society 2021

Our latest publication on black soldier fly larvae composting

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Check out our latest publication in Waste Management Process efficiency in relation to enzyme pre-treatment duration in black soldier fly larvae composting. We investigated the impact of enzyme pre-treatment time duration on the efficiency, in terms of biomass conversion efficiency and material reduction, in black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) composting of lettuce and cabbage (vegetable cuttings from Grönsakshallen Sorunda). We found that direct addition of enzyme (i.e. no pre-treatment time, but adding the enzymes as the same time as the larvae) was the only treatment that significantly improved process efficiency.

Continue reading Our latest publication on black soldier fly larvae composting

Jennifer McConville awarded SLU’s Career Grant

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Docent Jennifer McConville, at the Department of Energy and Technology, is one of the five researchers who has been awarded 3 million SEK as a career grant from the Vice-Chancellor of SLU.

SLU’s Career Grant is launched every second year to award researchers at the early stage of their careers. They receive a grant of 3 million SEK each. Jennifer McConville’s research uses systematic and applied sustainability analysis as decision support in planning and decision-making regarding sanitation and wastewater management. The aim is to improve resource recovery from these systems by adapting technical infrastructure and institutional arrangements. She performs her research in Sweden as well as low- and middle-income countries. She uses life cycle thinking, participation and socio-technical analysis to better understand and shape planning processes so that they can transition towards sustainability.

Jennifer McConville plans to use the career grant together with her research group to:

  • Develop and apply new transdisciplinary methods for sustainability analysis with a focus on resource recovery
  • Increase knowledge of trade-offs between different sustainability aspects
  • Develop guidance for transitioning to sanitation systems with increased resource efficiency and equitable access for all

The results of Jennifer McConville’s research will help authorities responsible for sanitation and wastewater management to increase resource recovery and choose more sustainable systems.

Continue reading Jennifer McConville awarded SLU’s Career Grant