Source: EOOS
By: Amnon Director, Angle
For many years, human urine has been a source of debate: some believed that it was harmful to vegetation, while others claimed that it was a particularly rich and nutritious liquid. In addition, the way it is treated after it leaves the body causes difficulties and problems: the modern process, which is based on the use of water and transportation of the materials, causes infections and a variety of problems that will only get worse with the massive increase in the world’s population.
However, today many studies confirm the effectiveness of human urine on an intriguing front: as a high-quality fertilizer. So how do you win on both fronts, and instead of causing a waste of resources, which also pollutes along the way – convert the human fluid into agricultural fertilizer?
Swedish researchers have developed a smart toilet that turns urine into fertilizer, while separating the desired liquid from the rest of the materials in the toilet. According to the researchers, the new development will lead to a revolution in the field of agriculture and above all to prevent the widespread pollution caused by human sewage. “Urine contains 50-80 percent of the nutrients (nutrients – ED) that are released in sewage, mainly nitrogen, phosphorus and even potassium – which are the most essential for plant growth,” explains Prof. Amit Gross, director of the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at the Desert Research Institute at Ben- Gurion in the Negev. So will he soon say goodbye to the familiar toilet, for the innovative Swedish facility?
The history of the pee
In the past, urine was an extremely expensive commodity. Until the end of the 19th century, the uses made of it were diverse, and in places like Japan, even then, urine was used to be sold to farmers so that they could make fertilizers from it. But at the beginning of the 20th century, the English invented the modern model of centralized sewage management (urban infrastructure that transfers sewage from toilets to treatment plants), which spread throughout the world and led to “urine blindness”: a situation in which modern society, due to the negative cultural meanings of Our secretions – keeps human urine away from itself, thus wasting its enormous potential.
According to Gross, we have recently “taken a turn” in this field, and we are returning to the correct and sustainable use of urine, and not only in it. “In recent years we have been going back in the direction of using our human resources,” he explains. Indeed, those behind the development of the new toilet are a team of researchers who founded Sanitation360, a company whose goal is to turn back the field of urine use, and to change our attitude towards the liquid that until now has been flushed down the drain.
Urinary – for urine
Source: EOOS
The new toilet, which is in advanced stages of development, is an innovative and smart toilet system that also separates the urine from the other materials in the toilet (feces, water and waste) through a dedicated hole for the liquid, and also converts the urine into fertilizer pellets. While the liquid stabilizes and dries, the toilet lowers the acidity level in the toilet, thus preserving the nitrogen and phosphorus in the urine. The described process eliminates the need for cumbersome piping or large storage tanks to store the liquid, because the process of collecting and creating the fertilizer is done inside the toilet itself.
Source: EOOS
As part of the experiment conducted by the researchers to test the quality of the fertilizer that the smart toilets produce, they collected over 700,000 liters of urine from urinals in Sweden, and grew crops on agricultural land in three ways: without fertilizers, using “normal” fertilizer, and with the fertilizer they produced from human urine. According to the results of the experiment, the land where the fertilizer they created was used produced the most crops.
The gift that never stops giving
Source: Jenna Senecal
The new development may solve several problems at the same time. “The human waste we produce, whether it is urine or feces, has an amount of energy that is three times greater than the energy we need to treat it,” he explains. “Instead of using other fertilizers that require a lot of energy for their production, such as nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers, we can get A significant part of these substances with the help of the use of human urine.’ That is to say, the development may prevent a double waste of energy: the energy directed to the treatment of the wastewater itself, and the energy required for the production of common fertilizers.
In addition, the Swedish development may solve the fertilizer shortage created as a result of the war between Russia and Ukraine, which are two of the main fertilizer exporters in the world, and which may arise with population growth and the growing need to feed more and more people. Indeed, according to the company’s estimates, humans produce enough urine to replace about a quarter of the current nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers worldwide.
The new development is also effective in reducing pollution in the sewer infrastructure and will enable smarter management of wastewater. “The very use of water to clean human waste creates a very large pollution,” says Gross. “The infrastructure for transporting waste water for miles to treatment facilities creates a variety of infections and problems, which are made possible at least with the help of development.” In addition, the company claims that not flushing urine into the sewer can save huge amounts of water and thus reduce some of the existing load on the sewage systems.
Different companies, common goal
The Swedish development is part of an extensive wave of research on the subject, which also created different developments. However, according to Gross, the current development stands out in the landscape. “The smart toilets have been around for many years, but so far they have not been able to make them common,” he explains. Indeed, this is the first time a toilet has been developed that manages to separate urine from other substances, it has already been put to use, and the company even plans to start marketing it to public and private customers soon.
And not just urine for fertilizer. Other studies and initiatives, whose goal is to recycle urine and sewage so that it can be used for various purposes such as a base for construction materials, fuel for robots, and even drinking water – already exist around the world, and it is clear that the change is already at hand. “The toilet is one of the few inventions that hasn’t changed in the last 150 years,” notes Gross. ‘But I believe that using human urine and faeces will become much more common, whether it takes 10 or 50 years. In view of the increase in the world population, the current situation cannot remain as it is: at some point we will no longer have space for the sewage treatment facilities.’