English – Page 18 – Kretsloppsteknik

PhD Defence of Prithvi Simha on Alkaline Urine Dehydration, 2nd of June

Published 20 May, 2021
By Prithvi Simha

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?

Published 18 May, 2021
By Lovisa Lindberg

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

Published 18 May, 2021
By Lovisa Lindberg

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

Published 18 May, 2021
By Lovisa Lindberg

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”

Published 17 May, 2021
By Lovisa Lindberg

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.

Barely is growing well!

Published 17 May, 2021
By Anastasija Vasiljev

With the moisture and warming sun, the barley from our urine fertilizer trials are growing nicely. Planted April 30th. At this stage there is no visible difference between the treatments (no fertilizer, conventional fertilizer and urine fertilizer).

Master student analyses nutrient flows

Published 3 May, 2021
By Lovisa Lindberg

My name is Sharareh Farshchiha and I am doing my master in Environmental Science at Gothenburg University. I write my master thesis for Sweden Water Research in collaboration with Robin Harder as my supervisor in SLU. The aim of the study is to map and analyze the circularity of nutrient flows (N, P, K) for the current agricultural system, food consumption, and waste management infrastructure in Sweden. To analysis the nutrient flows, the Swedish food system was divided into five subsystems where the analysis performed focused on: 1. agricultural land, 2. livestock production, 3. food processing, 4. food consumption, and 5. residual management. The five subsystems was investigated considering internal and external nutrient flows. Internal flow represents the regional food system while the external flow relates to any food system outside of the geographical region of Sweden which interacts with the regional food system by food and feed imports and exports. To calculate the amount of nutrients in the five subsystems associated with external and internal flows, a calculation model was performed in Microsoft Excel. The model calculation in this study was developed by Robin Harder for Swedish food system. The extend of the model for waste system was done by a collaboration between me and a student from Lund University, Emma Enström, who is doing her master thesis in the same topic but for Skåne.

Presentation about larvae for high school students held from the office

Published 26 April, 2021
By Lovisa Lindberg

Friday afternoon, the 23^rd of April, Lovisa Lindberg was standing in her office and held a presentation about larvae as a substitute for fish feed for high school students from Värmdö municipality. This was a part of BSSC’s (Baltic Sea Science Center) theme week at Skansen where they invited different experts to talk about their science projects related to the Baltic Sea. Classes from grade 9 up to grade 12 booked the lectures they wanted to attend to during this week. In addition to the lectures, they were sent material in advance to read or watch such as popular summaries about the topic or if there were any videos available. After the lecture, the work continued with a scientific paper related to the topic and the goal was for them to get an understanding of how a scientific paper is written.

Report from thematic workshop on recirculating nutrients from urban to rural areas

Published 26 April, 2021
By Lovisa Lindberg

In Sweden, as is the case in many places, there are signs of a disconnect between actors working in waste sectors and those working in farming, food, and agriculture. Yet there is a desire to bridge this gap. On 5 November 2020, the Swedish Nutrient Platform (SNP) and the project End-of-wastewater jointly held a thematic workshop on the topic of recirculating nutrients from urban to rural areas. In this multi-stakeholder digital workshop, 40 actors from the Swedish food and waste management sectors discussed desired characteristics of recycled fertilizer products derived from human excreta and wastewater, including how their uptake could be promoted. The workshop was guided by a literature review and a suite of interviews and surveys that were conducted prior to the workshop. The report summarizes the results from the workshop.

Can Sweden achieve a circular economy for phosphorus?

Published 20 April, 2021
By Lovisa Lindberg

The need for a more circular use of nutrients, notably phosphorus (P), has been widely discussed in Sweden, not least in response to the release of the new enquiry on sustainable use of sewage sludge (SOU 2020:3). But what would a transition to a circular economy for phosphorus look like? How much phosphorus is needed for biomass production in Sweden? And what possibilities are there to replace the widely used virgin mineral phosphorus with phosphorus from secondary sources?