Category: English

I’m Nils Ewald, one of the latest master students to join the Black Soldier Fly  team at the department. I’m currently doing my last year at the Agriculture program in Food Science here at SLU. As a student in food science it is very interesting to be able to dig into the widely discussed field of insects as food and feed. During the autumn I will investigate the fatty acid composition in the BSF larvae, as well as the substrates (such as food waste) they are reared upon. The aim is to see how the fatty acids found in different substrates affects the fatty acid composition in the fly larvae.

The Environmental Technology group was pleased to host Christine Moe, Gangarosa Professor of Safe Water and Sanitation at Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, USA. During her visit, 3-4^th of September 2018, Christine met the researchers and PhD students in the group and discussed potentials for future collaboration in research and education with sanitation sector. Christine also held a lunch seminar where she presented her research finding regarding “Examining Exposure to Fecal Contamination in Low-Income Urban Environments: Findings from the SaniPath Exposure Assessment in Seven Cities”. Christine’s visit came within the framework of the project “Microbiological and pharmaceutical risks from reuse of wastewater streams and products in agriculture, MPR-WST-agri”. MPR-WST-agri was funded in 2017 by the Swedish Foundation For International Cooperation In Research And Education- STINT. The project is led by Sahar Dalahmeh, a researcher in the group. 

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency decided to grant Sahar Dalahmeh, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 475 000 SEK to implement demonstration biochar filter for Small-scale Sewage Treatment”. The project intends to scale the laboratory system to full scale module to treat single- household wastewater. Within the project, system’s function and treatment ability as well as outgoing water quality will be evaluated. The Projects period is August 2018-July 2019.

Foto: Viktoria Wiklicky

I am a biologist from São Paulo State University (Unesp) and a PhD student from the Unesp Aquaculture Center (Caunesp), where I’m currently studying different handling methods of windrow thermophilic composting using fish carcasses (as nitrogen source) and wood shavings/peanut shells (as carbon sources). My study involves practical information about the composting process, economic assessment analysis and the influence of the organic composts on soil fertility, with special regard to nitrogen.
In SLU, I will study the BSF composting process using fish carcasses as larvae feed, with two main goals. In the first experiment, we will evaluate the improvement of larvae’s nutritional quality by supplying food waste and fish carcasses over time in different proportions. In the second experiment, we will verify the dynamics of pathogen reduction by means of the BSF larvae composting system, using fish carcasses as feed.

Foto: Evgheni Ermolaev

My name is Kristina Lundgren and I am a student in a master programme in Environmental and Water Engineering at Uppsala University and SLU. Starting in autumn, I will work on my Master Degree project at the Department of Energy and Technology, SLU, in the field of fly larvae composting using black soldier fly. In the project I am investigating how larva-specific bacteria affect the composting process. The idea is to see if it is possible to make the process more stable or effective by adding one or more bacteria to the substrate that the larvae will process. There are not so many studies that have this focus, so it will be very exciting to see what my experiments will show.

Contact
Cecilia Lalander

In 2015, the term ‘ecotechnology’ was used as one of the themes for a funding call by the joint Baltic Sea research and development programme BONUS. The call defined areas where ecotechnologies could be applied, but did not explicitly define the term itself.  Against this backdrop, researchers including Jennifer McConville from our group decided to systematically review the literature on the use of the term ‘ecotechnology’ to inform the future work of the BONUS RETURN project. Many articles simply use the term as a “buzzword” without offering a definition of the term. However, the review found 49 articles with explicit definitions. These definitions contain a variety of embedded concepts for describing the types of technologies, the benefits and the processes that can be seen as ecotechnologies. We clustered these concepts into a conceptual framework that we feel captures the multiple perspectives represented in the term ecotechnology. Note that several of these concepts may be in conflict with each other. This framework is offered as a starting point for discussion around a possible common vision of ecotechnology, or at a way for authors to be transparent about the concepts embedded in their use of the term. On the basis of this review the author propose the following definition for use in the BONUS RETURN project:                                                                                                                                          ‘‘Eco-technologies are human interventions in socialecological systems in the form of practices and/or biological, physical, and chemical processes designed to minimise harm to the environment and provide services of value to society’’ 

On September 25 at 13:00-16:00 we will have Open [Green] House in our black solider fly research facility at SLU campus Ultuna in Uppsala. We will demonstrate our facility for breeding of BSF flies and our research on different aspects of waste management using the BSF larvae.

During the Open [Green] House, the researchers of the Environmental Engineering group will present ongoing projects.

Last week, Viktoria Wiklicky from our research group participated in the Summer School “Insects as Food and Feed – from producing to consuming” organised by Wageningen University.  The summer school looked at various aspects of the insect food and feed chain, from from genetics to farming, handling/logistics, processing, marketing and consumption. The course was very well received by its participants, many of whom almost bombarded the lecturers with a range of interesting questions!  One highlight was the study visit to Belgium where participants spent a whole day at the Thomas More University of Applied Sciences and the University of Leuven, receiving lectures and a tour through the research facilities, with focus on their ongoing insect projects. 

Our fly larvae team participated in the yearly Matologi event organized by SLU. This year’s exhibition had a focus on waste and climate. Evgheni Ermolaev, Giulio Zorzetto and Panav Gupta presented the Kretsloppsfluga concept being developed by the group and showed the treatment module currently being tested at a pilot plant at Eskilstuna Strängnäs Energi och Miljö AB.