MVM 10 year jublee

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Last week our main building MVM, which contains our offices and laboratories, turned 10 and we all celebrated together! Many bright brains have entered and left this building in the past 10 years, so to catch up with the current staff, some of us took the celebration as an opportunity to present their group to our fellow colleagues. Nothing better than a stroll through our diverse work place, with Fika and coffee afterwards!

Speaking of Fika: The fly larva had their own version of Swedish Fika, two boxes containing 10.000 larva each were fed (vegetarian) hamburgers and cake and our colleagues could vote on menti.com which of the two meals would be gone first! It was a tight race but in the end the larva clearly preferred the cake! Who can say no to some easily available carbs in winter!

Who cares about toilets?

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Check out the article we wrote with SLU Global for World Toilet Day.

Today is World Toilet Day. According to WHO and UNICEF around four billion people in the world does not have access to a safely managed sanitation service. Untreated wastewater released to the environment can contaminate drinking-water sources, rivers, beaches and food crops, spreading deadly diseases among the wider population. This is rather unfortunate because source-separated wastewater fractions like human urine and faeces are renewable resources from which water, nutrients and energy can be recovered and safely recycled and used as a fertiliser. So SLU cares!

In the wastewater that comes out of a household, human urine makes up just 1% of total volume. However, in terms of nutrients, urine contains more than 80% of the nitrogen and over half of the potassium and the phosphorus. In fact, urine produced by people worldwide contains enough nutrients to fertilise three-quarters of the food we eat.

Earlier this year, Dr. Prithvi Simha from the Department of Energy and Technology at SLU, defended his thesis, which developed a novel on-site sanitation technology called “alkaline urine dehydration” to capture all the nutrients in urine without its water. Prithvi and his team at SLU are working to disrupt the way we manage wastewater and design sanitation systems. They believe that resources like urine should be separately collected, safely treated to produce fertilisers, and returned to farmland to close the nutrient loop in our food system. If implemented globally, such a system could reduce the transgression of the planetary boundary for nitrogen and phosphorus by 35% and 25%, respectively.

Continue reading Who cares about toilets?

Talk at the Baltic Sea Science Center in Stockholm

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Last week on 15th of November, Jenna Senecal and Anastasija Vasiljev gave a talk on urine research at the Baltic Sea Science Center in Stockholm. The topic of discussion was “From Fork to Farm and from Farm to Fork. How toilets are a part of this cycle”. The audience consisted of around 20 high school teachers.

Together with another lecture done by Stockholm Vatten och Avfall, we felt that we made quite an impact and we hope that the teachers will feel inspired to share our technologies with their students.

If you want to know more about the Baltic Sea Science Center and what they do, click here.

And to see what SLU is doing regarding the center, click here.

Happy World Toilet Day!

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Today is all about toilets! Can you imagine how your life would be without one? They are a part of our lives so much, that we don’t even think about their existence.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for more than 3.6 billion people. They lack access to safe sanitation and their lives without a toilet are dirty, dangerous and undignified. Public health greatly depends on the toilets, as well as the improvements in gender equality, education, economics, and the environment. Our sustainable future cannot happen without them!

Each of us will spend around a year of their lives using a toilet, so if you have one, thank it and give it some love!

If you want to know more about how we can use toilets to create more sustainable future, please free to check out some of our research:

Happy Wold Toilet Day! 

Studiebesök fran Kjell och MÀrta Beijers Stiftelse

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Förra veckan vĂ€lkomnade Cecilia Lalander frĂ„n Kretsloppsteknik besökare frĂ„n Kjell och MĂ€rta Beijers Stiftelsen pĂ„ SLU Campus i Ultuna. I rampljuset var det senaste projekt “5 ton grön fisk i disk” (se blogginlĂ€gg frĂ„n 4 mars https://blogg.slu.se/kretsloppsteknik/2021/03/04/red-containers-at-campus/ ), dĂ€r insektsmjöl tillverkades till fiskfoder pĂ„ Campus Ultuna.

Besöket var ett utmÀrkt tillfÀlle att visa kretsloppsteknik-gruppens starka kompetens och relevans nÀr det gÀller cirkulÀr ekonomi (avfallshantering och foderproduktion). Efter ett snabbt besök skyndande gruppen vidare för att besöka andra forskargruppen och  fÄ en inblick i den breda och viktiga forskning som bedrivs pÄ SLU.

Kjell och MÀrta Beijers Stiftelse bildades 1974 genom en donation frÄn Kjell och MÀrta Beijer. Utöver vetenskaplig forskning och utbildning stödjer stiftelsen kultur, framför allt med anknytning till svensk design och heminredningstradition. Stiftelsen stÄr bland annat bakom Beijerinstitutet, ett av vÀrldens ledande forskningscentrum inom ekologisk ekonomi. Vilken bra dag det var och Cecilia fick mÄnga intressanta frÄgor och nÄgra av besökarna Àven provsmakade till och med vÄra torkade larver!

Studyvisit from Kjell och MĂ€rta Beijers Stiftelse

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Cecilia Lalander from Kretsloppsteknik welcomed visitors from the Kjell and MĂ€rta Beijers Stiftelse at SLU campus in Ultuna. In the spotlight was the latest project “5 ton fish on the counter” (see blogpost from 04. March https://blogg.slu.se/kretsloppsteknik/2021/03/04/red-containers-at-campus/), where feed for trout was produced from insect meal at Campus Ultuna.

The visit was a great opportunity to show the groupÂŽs strong competences and relevance in regards of circular economy (wastemanagement and feed production). After a quick visit, the group hurried on to visit other research groups and get an insight to the wide and important research conducted at SLU.

The Kjell and MĂ€rta Beijer Foundation was founded in 1974 through a donation from Kjell and MĂ€rta Beijer. In addition to scientific research and education, the foundation supports culture, above all in connection with Swedish design and home furnishing tradition. Among other things, the foundation is behind the Beijer Institute, one of the world’s leading research centers in ecological economics. It had been a great day and Cecilia received a lot of interesting questions and also witnessed some of the visitors testing our dried larvae first hand!

Our BSF project “5 ton grön fisk i disk” featured in Dagens nyheter

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FrĂ„n februari till maj 2021 producerade projektet “5 ton grön fisk i disk” (delfinansierat av Vinnova) 1,7 ton larvar pĂ„ en blandning av 10 ton grönsaks- och brödavfall. Grönsakerna kom frĂ„n  Sorunda Grönsakshallen medan brödet var Ă„tertaget bröd frĂ„n Fazer . Larverna producerades inte bara pĂ„ SLU campus utan blev Ă€ven vidareförĂ€dlade hĂ€r: efter torkning vid 60°C i 48 timmar pressades den torra larvar i en skruvpress för att separera frĂ„n proteinet frĂ„n fettet. Det avfettade proteinmjölet förvandlades sedan till fiskfoder till regnbĂ„gslax, som föddes upp av Älvdalslax i Dalarna.

Behandlingsresten, det sÄ kallade frasset, anvÀndes som jordförbÀttring pÄ en nÀrliggande studentledd permakulturodling.

 

Dagens nyheter hörde talas om projektet och kom och besökte oss. Jessica Ritzen följde Cecilia Lalander och Anders Kiessling genom de olika stadierna av proteinproduktionen till fem-ton-fisk-i-disk projektet. Följ lÀnken för att lÀsa hela artikeln hÀr.

Our BSF project “5 ton grön fisk i disk” featured in Dagens nyheter

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From February to May 2021, the project “5 ton grön fisk i disk” (partly financed by Vinnova) produced 1,7 tons of larvae on a mix of 10 tonnes vegetable and bread waste. The vegetables were discarded vegetable cuttings from

Sorunda Grönsakshallen and the bread was out-of-date Fazer bread from local supermarkets. The larv ae were not only produced at SLU campus but they were also further processed here: after drying at 60°C for 48 h, the dry larva were pressed in a screw press to separate the protein from the fat. The defatted protein meal was then turned into fish feed, containing many other locally sourced ingredients, for rainbow trout. The trout were grown by Älvdalslax in Dalarna.

The residue from the treatment, the frass, was used as soil amendment on the nearby student run permaculture garden. Dagens nyheter found out about this cool project and came to visit us. Jessica Ritzen followed Cecilia Lalander and Anders Kiessling through the different stages of the protein production for the 5 ton fish on the counter project. Read the full article here.

New publication from the urine dying group on the use of magnesium-doped alkaline substrates in the Chemical Engineering Journal

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In our latest paper, published in the Chemical Engineering Journal, we show how all the nitrogen in fresh human urine can be captured in the form of solid urine-based fertilisers.

Abstract: Recycling urine can reduce the flux of reactive nitrogen in the environment. This paper presents a novel approach to recover all N (Ntot) from urine, including ammonia (TAN; about 5% of Ntot), which is usually volatilised when alkalised urine is dehydrated. As analytical methods for measuring N have a standard deviation of at least 5%, real fresh urine was fortified with ammonia (urineN) or ammonia and phosphate (urineNP) so that TAN comprised 10% of Ntot. The urine was then added to different magnesium-based alkaline substrates (MgO, Mg(OH)2, MgCl2 + Mg(OH)2) and dried at 38 ˚C. Chemical speciation modelling suggested that, irrespective of the substrate, >98% of Ntot in urineNP was recovered and 86% of TAN was precipitated as struvite. Experimental results showed that < 90% of Ntot was recovered when urineNP was dried in MgO and Mg(OH)2, suggesting that no TAN was captured. However, all phosphorus and potassium and 93% (±5%) of Ntot and 30% of TAN were recovered when urineNP was dried in MgCl2 + Mg(OH)2, as the [Mg]:[NH4]:[PO4] molar ratio of 1.69:1.14:1.0 in urine favoured formation of struvite. Overall, this study demonstrated that all ammonia excreted in real fresh urine (unfortified, TAN < 5% Ntot) can be captured if urine is dried in substrates containing 3.7 g MgCl2·6H2O L−1 or 2.2 g MgSO4 L−1, but no calcium. Ammonia can also be captured if fresh urine is saturated with MgO or Mg(OH)2 with high reactivity (<60 s citric acid test). If the drying substrate has pH > 10 throughout the treatment, urease enzyme-catalysed degradation of urea to ammonia is prevented, resulting in complete recovery of all nutrients. The end-product is a solid fertiliser containing 10–11% nitrogen, 1–2% phosphorus and 2–3% potassium.

Continue reading New publication from the urine dying group on the use of magnesium-doped alkaline substrates in the Chemical Engineering Journal

Poor awareness and attitudes to sanitation servicing can impede China’s Rural Toilet Revolution: Evidence from Western China

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Check out our new publication following up on China’s nationwide sanitation campaign, “the toilet revolution” in the journal, Science of the Total Environment.

Abstract: The ongoing Toilet Revolution in China offers an opportunity to improve sanitation in rural areas by introducing new approaches, such as urine source separation, that can contribute to achieving SDG6. However, few studies have systematically assessed the social acceptability of managing human excreta collected in new sanitation systems. Therefore, in this study we performed face-to-face interviews with 414 local residents from 13 villages across three provinces in western China, to analyze the current situation and attitudes to possible changes in the rural sanitation service chain. We found that the sanitation chain was predominantly pit latrine-based, with 86.2% of households surveyed collecting their excreta in a simple pit, 82% manually emptying their pits, and 80.2% reusing excreta in agriculture without adequate pre-treatment. A majority (72%) of the households had a generally positive attitude to production of human excreta-derived fertilizer, but only 24% agreed that urine and feces should be collected separately. Multivariate logistic regression indicated that three factors (level of education, number of permanent household residents, perceived social acceptability) significantly influenced respondents’ attitudes to reuse of excreta, although only perceived social acceptability had a high strength of association. Overall, our survey revealed that rural households often misuse toilet systems, fail to comply with government-specified sanitation guidelines, have low awareness of alternative solutions, and are over-reliant on the government to fix problems in the service chain. Thus while new sanitation technologies should be developed and implemented, information campaigns that encourage rural households to manage their excreta safely are also important.

Continue reading Poor awareness and attitudes to sanitation servicing can impede China’s Rural Toilet Revolution: Evidence from Western China