Source-separating sanitation systems – Page 13

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

Published 19 August, 2020
By Prithvi Simha

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.

New book chapter discusses alkaline urine dehydration at scale

Published 28 July, 2020
By Prithvi Simha

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., & Vinnerås, 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

Sanitation360 wins the Skapapriset 2020 for Gotland County

Published 25 June, 2020
By Prithvi Simha

Our group’s spinoff company, Sanitation360 AB, was recently declared the winner of the Skapapriset for Gotland, where the company is based. The jury on Gotland was of the opinion that the S360 team (Jenna, Björn and Prithvi) were very good representatives for Gotland. S360 now moves onto the final round, where we will compete with companies from all the Swedish counties.

The SKAPA Prize is Sweden’s largest innovation award, with the aim of providing support to inventors to develop their ideas. SKAPA is a foundation founded in memory of Alfred Nobel in 1985 and awarded its first prize in 1986. Behind the foundation stands the Stockholm Fair and the Swedish Inventors’ Association supported by Almi Företagspartner AB, VINNOVA, the Agne Johansson Foundation and the Patent and Registration Office. The prize is first awarded at the county level, where all county winners receive SEK 10,000, then nationally.

Vote for Sanitation360 to win the “Create the Future Design Contest”

Published 22 June, 2020
By Prithvi Simha

The group’s startup company, Sanitation360 AB, is taking part in the Create the Future Design Contest, which was first launched in 2002 by the publishers of Tech Briefs magazine to help stimulate and reward engineering innovation. Our entry which is called “Save the world by going to the bathroom!” puts forward our research and development of the urine drying concept, where the idea is to convert human urine into a dry, safe, nutrient-rich solid. The most popular entries will be decided by the voting of registered users of the contest web site. So help us by going to this website, where you can register as a user and vote for Sanitation360!

Click here to Vote for Sanitation360

Masters Thesis Student for Urine Drying Project

Published 21 June, 2020
By Prithvi Simha

Our intern Chinmoy Deb from India, has successfully completed all his theory subjects at SLU for the Mater’s program “Soil, Water and Environment” in a duration of one year. In his theory subjects, he had worked with soil-water systems and Geochemical modelling. Chinmoy has opted for a “One-year Master Thesis” for the rest of the credits left. He was here last year for the completion of his Bachelor’s thesis on Urine Drying Technologies. This year, in continuation with his previous work, Chinmoy will be focusing on different methods and medias for urine drying. Primarily, he’ll be concentrating on reclamation of water from human urine.

PhD defence Jenna Senecal

Published 15 June, 2020
By Prithvi Simha

We congratulate Jenna Senecal for a well performed defence of her PhD thesis “Safe Nutrient Recovery from Human Urine – System and Hugiene Evaluation of Alkaline Urine Dehydration”. It was a great discussion with the opponent Professor Chris Buckley from University of KwaZulu Natal, followed by the discussion with the evaluation committee, Ana Soares Cranfield Water Sciences Institute, H.B. Wittgren VA-Syd & Sweden Water Research, Helvi Heinonen-Tanski University of Eastern Finland, Malgorzata Krzywonos Wrocław University of Economics and Business and Sofia Boqvist SLU. If you missed it the event is available on the Energi och teknik Facebook page. The event was performed online as well as with an audience in the room, with social distance, in total there were 22 persons in the room listening and up to 36 persons following the dissertation online, it worked well, even if we were missing the interesting post seminar discussions with all involved persons.

36th month meeting for the Run4Life project

Published 8 June, 2020
By Prithvi Simha

The 36 month meeting during June 2-3 for the run4life project was like everything else held like an online meeting. All presentations and discussions were made online. It was interesting to hear that all the pilot areas included in the project were progressing and people are moving into the separating houses in Helsingborg, Gent, Sneek and Vigo. We all looking forward to the final year of the project and the exciting results we will get from it.

Link: https://run4life-project.eu/

Madeleine Fogde Honorary doctor at NJ faculty at SLU

Published 8 June, 2020
By Prithvi Simha

Congratulations and welcome to SLU, we look forward to continue the collaboration in the future. Program Manager Madeleine Fogde is a trained teacher and currently program manager for the Swedish International Agricultural Network Initiative (Siani), which is coordinated by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). Siani has a broad membership base and is a very inclusive organization that offers an attractive network for people working with agricultural research globally. She has worked extensively with low-income countries in Africa, including in a water supply and ecological sanitation program in Mozambique. She has a large worldwide network in agriculture, sanitation and women’s organizations.

New Publication on drying human urine using different alkaline media & temperatures

Published 13 May, 2020
By Prithvi Simha

In a study recently published in Science of the Total Environment, we present results from a study that investigated drying of fresh source-separated human urine in five different alkaline media (pH > 11) at elevated temperatures (50 and 60 °C) with minimal loss of urea, urine’s principal nitrogen compound. We found that it was possible to concentrate urine 48 times, yielding dry end-products with high fertiliser value: approximately, 10% N, 1% P, and 4% K. We monitored the physicochemical properties and the composition of various dehydration media to provide useful insights into their suitability for dehydrating urine. We demonstrated that it is possible to recover >90% nitrogen when treating fresh urine by alkaline dehydration by inhibiting the enzymatic hydrolysis of urea at elevated pH and minimising the chemical hydrolysis of urea with high urine dehydration rates.

New urine-diverting toilet & test bed for drying urine inaugurated at SLU

Published 27 February, 2020
By Prithvi Simha

On 7th February, we inaugurated our new urine-diverting toilet here at the department of energy and technology, at SLU’s Ultuna campus. The installation was made possible due to a grant from SLU-climate fund that financed the installation together with the Save! Urine diverting flushed toilet from Laufen and SLU’s landlord Akademiska hus. The existing conventional toilet was exchanged with the new Laufen toilet “Save!” as a permanent installation. The urine is led out from the wall and connected to the test bed (the larger box on the side into where the urine drying equipment is installed).