Category: English

Vietnames Agritech conference

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Björn was invited as Sweden’s representative in the Vietnames Agritech conference during the 28th of November. The title of his talk was technical solutions in relation to “Challenges in Post-Covid Environment for Agriculture Sector”. His focus of the presentation and the panel discussion was that the circular economy can reduce the pollution of the environment as we remove the nutrients from the linear flow of today. At the same time do we increase the resilience in the agriculture as we can replace up to half of the imported mineral fertilisers with local waste and wastewater generated fertilisers. The new Covid era gives new opportunities for global collaboration and knowledge sharing over the internet.

The panel discussion about the effect of Covid 19 upon food production and agriculture.
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Study visit from Sustainable Food Systems

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In September, the environmental engineering group received a study visit from students in the Sustainable Food Systems master program. The course Prospects and challenges for sustainable food systems, held by Pernilla TidĂĄker who is a senior lecturer at the Department of Energy and Technology, includes a couple of lectures on source separation of waste water and the concept of nutrient recycling. Victoria Wiklicky, research assistant, gave an introduction to fly larvae composting; Caroline Karlsson, also research assistant, talked about source-separation of waste water and urine drying and Annika Nordin, researcher, showed and talked about the environmental engineering group’s innovative waste water treatment solutions. The study visit was held outdoors in accordance with the covid-19 restrictions, the students circulated between the three stations, listened to and discussed the different research topics. They also got to pay a visit (at safe distance) to the urine diverting toilet and drying system at the department of Energy and Technology.

We developed a simple process to recycle urine. Here’s how it’s done in 10 Steps

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Every year on November 19, the United Nations celebrates one of public health’s greatest inventions – the toilet. Those who are fortunate enough to have access to one spend more than a year of their lives on it, yet millions of people worldwide cannot use one and many have never even seen one.

Invented back in 1775, the flush toilet has changed surprisingly little in design. In fact, a toilet is nothing more than a seat (or a pan) connected to a pipe with a bend. If this pipe is further connected to a system of sewers that carries away excreta to a centralised treatment plant, then wastewater can safely be discharged into the environment.

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Phosphorus and nitrogen recovery from anaerobic digestate – how effective is it?

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Anaerobic digestion is widely applied to sewage sludge and other organic residuals to stabilize the substrate and capture some of its energetic value via the production of biogas. By combining anaerobic digestion with nutrient recovery technologies, both energy and nutrients could be recovered. Struvite precipitation and ammonia stripping are two of the most mature technologies to recover phosphorus and nitrogen from streams such as the liquid fraction of anaerobic digestate. But how effective are these two processes in terms of nutrient recovery?

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United Nations Day – lecture on nutrient recycling and source-separating waste water systems for Malmö latinskola

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On 24 October every year, UN Day is celebrated and this year marked the anniversary of UN’s 75th anniversary. This year, Swedish high schools worked with the UN’s global goals and Malmö latinskola had chosen goal 6 – clean water and sanitation – and goal 14 – life below water. Caroline Karlsson, research assistant in the environmental engineering group; Jens Olsson, researcher at the Department of Aquatic Resources; and Helena Aronsson, senior lecturer at the Department of Soil and Environment, were invited to give lectures on these themes for a class of first-year students.

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Prithvi Simha speaks to SAfm radio station in South Africa about urine drying

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This week, following our article on urine recycling in The Conversation UK, Prithvi Simha from the group was invited for a live radio broadcast by SAfm, South Africa’s national public radio station, operated by the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The show is called Late Night Conversation with Patricia Ntuli. During the 30 minute interview, Prithvi and Patricia spoke about a range of topics surrounding urine recycling, and how urine can be dried using the group’s revolutionary invention, alkaline dehydration. Listen to it below –

Science/Environmental Conversations: We found a way to turn urine into solid fertiliser https://iono.fm/e/955572

Olof Sundström to work with plant growth trials with several organic fertilizers

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Hello! My name is Olof Sundström and I just started working as a research assistant at the Environmental Engineering group. I graduated as a Soil/Crop Agronomist this June and I have been looking forward to start working. Stockholm is my hometown but most of my family is from the greater Uppsala area. My interest for agriculture and nature have always been strong, which explains the choice of education. The areas in agriculture that I am most interested in are plant pathology and plant nutrition. While here, I will be working with a greenhouse experiment. The purpose of the experiment is to examine the value of several organic fertilizers on basil and westerwold ryegrass. Even though my time here will be brief, I am happy to be a part of the team.

REWAISE – the new EU H2020 project piloting urine drying in Malmö

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The 5-year European H2020 Project REWAISE has just started, involving 24 partners from 11 different European countries, and is led by Aqualia. It aims to shift the paradigm from a linear to a circular, water smart economy. As a part of this project, SLU-Kretsloppsteknik is a linked third partner with the aim to build and install its revolutionary sanitation technology, alkaline urine dehydration, in the Swedish city of Malmo. On the SLU side, we will work primarily with VA SYD, Sweden Water Research and Malmo Stad.

We will do this by working together with Sanitation360, our spin-off company commercialising the technology and EOOS Next, an Austrian design firm that will help design a new prototype that brings us closer to real-life implementation. Already over the past few months, SLU, S360 and EOOS Next have been intensively building and testing the prototype, which has now left Vienna and is on its way to us in Uppsala. After more testing at SLU, this module will be installed along with Laufen’s exciting new urine-diverting toilet called Save! at a toilet inside the office headquarters of the VA SYD wastewater treatment plant.

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RECLAIM – serious gaming soon on the market (limited edition!)

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The SPANS project (Sanitation Planning for Alternative Nutrient-recovery Systems) has developed a serious game as a way of informing decision-making in sanitation planning incorporating the recycling of nutrient resources. The game has been tested with decision-makers and university students in Uganda and Sweden. Participants have found the game fun and useful for discussing challenges in sanitation planning.

The game is an board game that is designed for playing with a group of 4 participants. See this video for details of the game.

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