Category: English

Launching the Guide to Sanitation Resource-Recovery Products & Technologies

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We are pleased to announce the we will soon be publishing a Guide to Sanitation Resource-Recovery Products & Technologies! To launch this publication we are hosting a webinar on the SuSanA forum.

When? 22nd of October, 2020 between 14:00-15:00 CEST. Details and registration can be found on this link: https://www.susana.org/en/news-and-events/sanitation-events/upcoming-events?details=170

This Webinar is organized by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Makerere University and the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE) in collaboration with SuSanA working group 5 as part of the SPANS research project. It will present a new publication related to resource recovery from sanitation systems – the Guide to Sanitation Resource-Recovery Products & Technologies. The publication is designed as a supplement to the Eawag Compendium of Sanitation Systems and Technologies. It provides an overview of the possibilities for resource recovery from sanitation and provide guidance on treatment processes to achieve safe products for reuse. The webinar will introduce the guide, including an overview of the technologies and products that are covered in the document, and discuss how the information sheets can be used a reference book for sanitation planning and decision-making.

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BSF larvae as chicken feed

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This summer the BSF farm supplied 40 laying hens with 25kg of live larva per week. The experiment stretched over 14 weeks and in the end a grand total of 350kg of live larva ended up as nutritious chicken feed! The hens were split up into three experimental groups, in addition to a control group, each group following a different diet: A standard chicken feed with a substitution of 10%, 20% and ad libitum larvae was provided to evaluate the impact on the hens. They were monitored on a regular basis with weekly measurements of hen body weight, egg production, and feed consumption. The amount of larvae consumed was measured daily and egg quality and behavior data were also collected. The researchers will use the results of this study to select the diet that includes the highest substitution of protein from soy to BSF larvae while still maintaining appropriate egg production and hen welfare.

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Our new team member Gabriella will work with microplastics!

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My name is Gabriella and I have just started working as a research assistant at SLU. I have studied environmental engineering and I graduate recently. My dissertation focused on small-scale water purification and was carried out as an MFS (Minor Field Study) project in the Kenyan capital Nairobi 2019. In Nairobi’s slum Kibera, the possibility of purifying irrigation water with a vertical biochar garden filter was designed, implemented and evaluated. I am generally interested in water issues, but especially in water purification technology and small-scale sewage systems. As a research assistant, I will focus on microplastic analyzes and filtration, which feels both new, important and exciting!

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Publication on field testing alkaline urine dehydration at pilot-scale in Finland

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In early 2019, we designed and installed a pilot shell system to dry fresh urine collected from about 100 toilet users each day (or a maximum of 30 liters of urine day-1). The system was implemented at a Finnish army training ground (Camp Mauri) belonging to Pori Brigade, which is a garrison in Säkylä, Finland and was used for a period of three months between March and May 2019. In a new publication in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science, we describe results of the evaluation of the technology. The publication can be openly accessed here:

Simha P, Karlsson C, Viskari E-L, Malila R and VinnerĂĄs B (2020). Field Testing a Pilot-Scale System for Alkaline Dehydration of Source-Separated Human Urine: A Case Study in Finland. Front. Environ. Sci. 8:570637. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2020.570637

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New Post Doc in the group will work on wastewater sustainability assessment

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My name is Priscila Lima and I have just started a postdoc within the Environmental Engineering group. I am originally from Brazil and I have lived in the US and in Denmark for some time. I am an Environmental Engineer that has been working with solid waste management systems ever since my bachelor’s thesis. Most recently, my PhD thesis was on Environmental Assessment of solid waste systems for Brazil and a case study in my Municipality in the west central region of the country, and I used Life Cycle Assessment for this. Before coming to Sweden I was performing research in my hometown, with a main focus on Life Cycle Assessment of different types of waste. Now, I have joined Jennifer at Kretsloppsteknik in a project to assess the sustainability aspects of waste systems, with main focus on nutrient recovery from these systems.

EVAS – a practical tool to assess the sustainability of small wastewater treatment systems in low and lower-middle-income countries

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Claudia Cossio, a former PhD student affiliated with the group, has published an article regarding the development and application of an Excel-based tool to holistically evaluate the sustainability of existing wastewater treatment plants  in low and middle income countries. Many small wastewater treatment systems (WWTSs) in low and lower-middle income countries face challenges to achieve optimal performance and acceptable levels of sustainability. In order to provide guidance for operation of these systems, Claudia and her colleagues developed a practical tool to diagnose the actual status of WWTSs and identify weak areas for further improvement.

The article is available Open Access – https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140938

The Excel tool is available on the Chalmers website – https://research.chalmers.se/en/publication/516714

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New book chapter discusses alkaline urine dehydration at scale

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In a bio-based circular economy, domestic wastewater has a significant role to play. By separating wastewater into different fractions at the source, it is possible to create new pathways for recycling resources. In a book chapter published in Current Developments in Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Simha et al. discuss about the most nutrient-rich wastewater fraction, human urine. We present a new, simple, yet potentially revolutionary nutrient recycling technology — alkaline urine dehydration. We then describe how this technology can be combined with urine-diverting toilets and integrated with existing sanitation infrastructure to create a service chain that safely collects, contains, transports, and applies urine as fertilizer. The potential benefits, risks, knowledge gaps, and challenges surrounding the implementation of a urine-diverting and dehydrating sanitation system are discussed. Finally, the prospect of creating smart toilets and digitizing the proposed sanitation system are explored. To read the full chapter, follow the link below:

Simha, P., Senecal, J., Gustavsson, D. J., & VinnerĂĄs, B. (2020). Resource recovery from wastewater: a new approach with alkaline dehydration of urine at source. In Current Developments in Biotechnology and Bioengineering (pp. 205-221). Elsevier.

Alternatively, Click here to access the freely available pre-print version of the chapter on RG

Reduction of bacteria in relation to feeding regimes when treating aquaculture waste in fly larvae composting

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The partnership between the Environmental Engineering Group at SLU and Dr. Ivã Guidini Lopes from the Aquaculture Center of Unesp (São Paulo, Brazil) resulted in a second publication, entitled “Reduction of bacteria in relation to feeding regimes when treating aquaculture waste in fly larvae composting”, recently published in Frontiers in Microbiology, as part of the research topic “Microbial dynamics during industrial rearing and processing of insects”.

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