Tag: Source-separating sanitation systems

The barley fertilized with our dried urine is growing well.

The picture meant to be posted here as well (but can’t) is taken 27 days after planting and it looks really good!

The public defence of the doctoral thesis for Prithvi Simha, entitled “Alkaline Urine Dehydration. How to dry source-separated human urine and recover nutrients?” is scheduled –

When? 2nd of June at 13:00 Where? Room Framtiden at MVM-hus at SLU in Uppsala and via Zoom Click this URL to join via Zoom: https://slu-se.zoom.us/j/69422000884 with Passcode: 732271

External reviewer: Professor Nancy Love, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.

Examining committee: Professor Annelie Hedström, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden; Docent Sebastian Schwede, Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden; and PhD Surendra Pradhan, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopia, Finland

The thesis is openly available at: https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/23473/1/simha_p_210511.pdf

At the end of April all new professors at SLU were having their installation lectures. A totally new concept with online lectures and the audience could ask questions online. Björn gave his lecture with focus on how we in the future can decrease the emissions to the environment by disconnecting us from the water and wastewater system and instead use the same water in the house by cleaning and reusing it at the same time as we produce a clean fertiliser out of the toilet fraction. In total 147 people were attending the lecture. It is still possible to follow the lecture at the following link: https://youtu.be/EYtuP0ino3M?t=15148

Contact: Björn Vinnerås

With the moisture and warming sun, the barley from our urine fertilizer trials are growing nicely. Planted April 30th. At this stage there is no visible difference between the treatments (no fertilizer, conventional fertilizer and urine fertilizer).

Our company, Sanitation360, that is looking to commercialize the urine drying technology developed by our group received Vinnova funding to develop a business model for implementing the urine treatment system in South Africa. This is an ideal starting point as in and around Durban, South Africa, there is increase interest in urine-diverting toilets and SLU has an on-going collaboration with the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The project start now and will run till December 2021.

My name is Linnéa and I am doing my master thesis at Uppsala University (UU) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). I am currently in my last semester as a civil engineer in molecular biotechnology at UU. I was born and raised in Västerås but have lived and studied in Uppsala since 2016. I had never been to SLU before my master thesis, so I think it is exiting to discover new environments and meet new people during my semester here writing my master thesis!

My thesis is a collaboration between UU, SLU and two companies called Nanoform Science and Sanitation 360. Nanoform Science is a company that has developed a technology for manufacturing very acidic metal oxide surfaces which should have antimicrobial properties. Sanitation 360 is a company that wants to turn human urine into dry fertilizer by using treatment systems in connection with urine-separating toilets. These two companies are both interested in investigating the properties of these very acidic metal oxide surfaces. Nanoform Science wants to investigate whether the surfaces have antimicrobial activity, since they thereafter could develop the surfaces into environments where biofilms thrive, e.g. hospitals, dental clinics and sewage systems. Sanitation 360 is interested in the surfaces since biofilm growth in their treatment system leads to loss of nutrition in their fertilizer product.

During my work, I will mainly focus on developing a method for growing urease-positive biofilms, then I want to test the method on the surfaces from Nanoform Science.

Last Wednesday, Annika Nordin in the Environmental Engineering group held her docent lecture Safe resource recovery – managing microbial hazards of wastewater reuse systems. If you for some reason missed it, don’t fret, you can watch it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/preview/Kretsloppsteknik/Docent%20lectures/Docent%20lecture%20Annika%20Nordin.mp4?role=work

On 5th of March, Prithvi had his pre-dissertation seminar: Alklaine Urine Dehydration – how to dry urine and recover nutrients. David Gustavsson from VA SYD/Sweden Water Research was Prithvi’s opponent at the seminar and he quizzed Prithvi on his published papers as well as his preliminary thesis (or kappa). Overall, it was very interesting and long discussion ranging on topics like reactive nitrogen and ammonia capture, the use of different alkaline substrates, the use of IoT in sanitation and global sanitation outlook. With this successful seminar, Prithvi will now proceed further and have his PhD defence which is scheduled to be held on the 2nd of June in Uppsala and via zoom online. We thank David again for his thorough and insightful discussion on the topic!