Tag: Source-separating sanitation systems

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Earlier today, Prof. Håkan Jönsson, Pernilla Tidåker, and Prithvi Simha coordinated a student (from the Sustainable Food Systems master’s program at SLU) visit to a garden and a house owned by Håkan, who has designed a local system where most of the plant nutrients from the household are recycled back to the garden and used as fertilizer. For a very long time Håkan has implemented source separation in his own house and uses all source-separated urine and kitchen compost as fertilizer in his garden, where he grows vegetables and berry bushes. During the visit, the students saw how a small-scale source separation systems can look like and discussed options and challenges for future upscaling.

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Several members of the group were present at the 28th annual meeting of the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance in Stockholm, prior to the world water week. On the sidelines of the meeting, we also got to have a great first meeting with Gustavo Heredia, the chairman of the Board of Directors of the AGUATUYA Foundation in Bolivia. Sanitation360, our group’s university start-up that plans to implement the urine dehydration technology is in discussions with AGUATUYA to treat from urine-diverting toilets in El Alto, Bolivia.

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Earlier today, we were happy to welcome a group of 20 delegates from the Finnish Water and Wastewater Association interested in on-site sanitation systems. From the group, Prithvi presented the urine drying technology. During the seminar, there were several presentations from organisations outside the university, e.g. VA-Guiden and the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management.

During the last week, group members Prithvi Simha and Giulio Zorzetto were in Tampere, Finland where they installed a new urine dehydrator module that is being pilot tested in the Hiedanranta neighbourhood of the city of Tampere. The treatment module was constructed at SLU, transported to Finland, reasssembled at TAMK, and finally installed at the basement of the Lielahti Manor house. Urine from two different toilets in the manor house, which itself is undergoing renovation, is planned to be diverted to this treatment system over the coming week. This installation, once in operation, has the potential to open up a new avenue for local collection and treatment of urine in urban settings.

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The three month long urine drying pilot installation at the Pori Birgade in Säkylä, Finland was dismantled last week, bringing to an end the first field demonstration of our technology. As you’ll recall from our previous blogs, we integrated a urine dehydration module with capacity of treating 40 L urine/day/m2 into an existing, mobile dry sanitation system – the Biomaja toilet. During this pilot, we have been collecting samples of the end-product/fertiliser (see picture below), monitoring various physico-chemical properties as well as energy consumption of the treatment module. Over the coming months, we will be analysing the collected samples, along with our partners in Finland. While the module received less urine than its design capacity, it functioned smoothly throughout the pilot period.

Following the successful wrap up of the MORTTI-project that piloted the group’s urine drying technology in field conditions for the first time, we are back in Finland once again this week. This time around, we will be constructing, installing, and integrating a urine dehydrator with – a dry urinal and a urine-diverting flush toilet. The system is scheduled to be installed at the Lielahti Manor in the Hiedanranta neighbourhood of the city of Tampere, and is designed to treat nearly 25 L of fresh urine/day for a period of 3 months. The project is being carried out by our group and Sanitation360, the group’s university-based startup company working with urine dehydration. Our partners in this project include the City of Tampere, Tampere University of Applied Sciences, and the Finnish Environment Institute. More updates to follow!

On 26th April, PhD Candidate Prithvi Simha presented his half-time seminar, “Urine Dehydration Technology for Decentralised Sanitation Systems” at SLU. In the seminar, Prithvi summarised and discussed two research papers & a draft book chapter on urine dehydration. Åke Nordberg, Assoc. Prof. in Bioenergy Technology was the opponent at the seminar.

This year, members of the Kretsloppsteknik group at SLU started Sanitation360, a startup company which aims to commercialise the urine dehydration technology being developed at SLU. As Sanitation360, we participated in the FAMAE Water Challenge (“Precious Water!”) where the goal was to design a simple and innovative product or service to preserve water, make it cleaner & accessible to everyone. Sanitation360’s innovative urine dehydrating toilet was selected amongst the Semi-finalists of the competition, finishing among the TOP 100 of more than 3,000 candidates from 120 countries. According to the Jury, our “disruptive phosphorous-capture toilet convinced the team and the Jury”.

FAMAE is an independent family foundation that supports innovation in the field of environnement. The foundation organizes every year an International Challenge to help inventors to create simple and innovative solutions that can substantially improve our daily lives, while significantly alleviating environmental footprints.

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Between December 2018 and February 2019, we installed and used eight family-scale urine dehydrator prototypes in Uppsala. At the end of this period, we managed to produce 40 kg of dry fertiliser (which our collegues in France call “granurin”) with a nitrogen content of 10%. We thus managed to dry nearly 500 L of urine, which is what an average person urinates in a year. This fertiliser is now being applied and tested as part of the AGROCAPI project, where the intent is to ‘study the agronomic valorization of products resulting from urine source separation’. The trials are being carried out in France by Tristan Martin and colleagues at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA).

Cllick to read more about the AGROCAPI project