Day 49 in our Barley Field Trials – No visible difference between the urine fertilizer (right) and the mineral fertilizer (+control; left). While the barley that did not receive fertilizer (-control, middle) is shorter and a paler green.
Category: English
The IVA 100 list
We are so happy that on the IVA list, our group is one among the 100 projects with our urine-based fertiliser!
Read more here!
Circular sanitary system of the future
Cecilia Lalander from environmental engineering group and other leading experts were interviewed about the circular sanitary system of the future. If you are interested, read more here (in Swedish):
https://www.forskning.se/2021/05/27/hur-ska-vi-bli-av-med-skiten
Contact: Cecilia Lalander
Update from Gotland!
The barley fertilized with our dried urine is growing well.
The picture meant to be posted here as well (but can’t) is taken 27 days after planting and it looks really good!
Nutrient Recovery and Reuse – Help Us Design a Systematic Map and Evidence Platform
Research and development of circular nutrient technologies has intensified over the past years, making research output in this field increasingly hard to navigate and keep track of. There is a need for a robust and comprehensive mapping and synthesis of existing relevant research and better brokering of knowledge to policy and practice.
Researchers at our group are involved in the collaborative project End-of-wastewater that aims to:
- Collate available peer-reviewed English language research on nutrient recovery and reuse into a comprehensive evidence base using systematic mapping methodology.
- Develop an online evidence platform to navigate relevant scientific papers with ease.
PhD Defence of Prithvi Simha on Alkaline Urine Dehydration, 2nd of June
The public defence of the doctoral thesis for Prithvi Simha, entitled “Alkaline Urine Dehydration. How to dry source-separated human urine and recover nutrients?” is scheduled –
When? 2nd of June at 13:00 Where? Room Framtiden at MVM-hus at SLU in Uppsala and via Zoom Click this URL to join via Zoom: https://slu-se.zoom.us/j/69422000884 with Passcode: 732271
External reviewer: Professor Nancy Love, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
Examining committee: Professor Annelie Hedström, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden; Docent Sebastian Schwede, Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden; and PhD Surendra Pradhan, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopia, Finland
The thesis is openly available at: https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/23473/1/simha_p_210511.pdf
Interested in practical aspects of Black Soldier Fly (BSF) waste processing?
As BSF has become mainstream as an exciting way to treat organic waste, we receive more and more inquiries with questions on “what shall I” and “how shall I”. Academic journal articles seldom give enough easily digestible answers for practitioners, interested in starting or already operating a BSF facility.
For this purpose a practical knowledge hub webpage has been established which contains information all around BSF waste processing in a hopefully easy and practical format for people “in the field”.
Professor installation lecture
At the end of April all new professors at SLU were having their installation lectures. A totally new concept with online lectures and the audience could ask questions online. Björn gave his lecture with focus on how we in the future can decrease the emissions to the environment by disconnecting us from the water and wastewater system and instead use the same water in the house by cleaning and reusing it at the same time as we produce a clean fertiliser out of the toilet fraction. In total 147 people were attending the lecture. It is still possible to follow the lecture at the following link: https://youtu.be/EYtuP0ino3M?t=15148
Contact: Björn Vinnerås
BSFL frass used to grow vegetables
Containing substantial amounts of plant nutrients, black soldier fly larvae frass or “BSF residue”, is a promising soil amendment that gains more and more interest with increasing BSF farming around the globe. In the last years, the residue at our BSF colony, accumulating from various chicken and fish feed experiments, was an overlooked ”by-product”. Most of the residue ended up in our own garden plots or worse, was sent off for incineration. As the 2021 garden-season kicked off, the BSF group teamed up with Ultuna Permaculture to put 500 kg of BSF residue to good use! Last month, the garlics received their first load of extra nutrients and once the weather starts to warm up, the potatoes are next. Our vision is to create a closed loop system in which we feed our fly larvae with locally sourced waste (such as bread or vegetable waste from nearby factories), generate protein in form of larval biomass and put the residue from the process back into the food chain.
Contact: Viktoria Wiklicky
Best Paper Award for “Recycling Nutrients Contained in Human Excreta to Agriculture: Pathways, Processes, and Products”
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.