Simha, Prithvi and Lalander, Cecilia and Nordin, Annika and Vinnerås, Björn
(2020).
Alkaline dehydration of source -separated fresh human urine: Preliminary insights into using different dehydration temperature and media.
Science of the Total Environment. 733
, 139313
, 1-10
[Journal article]
![]() |
PDF
1MB |
Abstract
For sanitation systems aiming at recycling nutrients, separately collecting urine at source is desirable as urine contains most of the nutrients in wastewater. However, reducing the volume of the collected urine and recovering majority of its nutrients is necessary, as this improves the transportability and the end-application of urine-based fertilisers. In this study, we present an innovative method, alkaline dehydration, for treating fresh human urine into a nutrient-rich dry solid. Our aim was to investigate whether fresh urine (pH<7) added to five different alkaline media (pH>11) could be dehydrated 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 physico-chemical 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 minimisingthe chemical hydrolysis of urea with high urine dehydration rates.
Authors/Creators: | Simha, Prithvi and Lalander, Cecilia and Nordin, Annika and Vinnerås, Björn | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Title: | Alkaline dehydration of source -separated fresh human urine: Preliminary insights into using different dehydration temperature and media | ||||||
Series Name/Journal: | Science of the Total Environment | ||||||
Year of publishing : | 2020 | ||||||
Volume: | 733 | ||||||
Article number: | 139313 | ||||||
Number of Pages: | 10 | ||||||
Publisher: | Elsevier | ||||||
ISSN: | 0048-9697 | ||||||
Language: | English | ||||||
Publication Type: | Journal article | ||||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||||
Version: | Published version | ||||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 | ||||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 2 Engineering and Technology > 208 Environmental Biotechnology > Water Treatment | ||||||
Keywords: | Bioeconomy, Fertiliser, Nutrient recovery, Resource-oriented sanitation, Urine dehydration, Wastewater treatment | ||||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-106786 | ||||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-106786 | ||||||
Additional ID: |
| ||||||
ID Code: | 17293 | ||||||
Faculty: | NJ - Fakulteten för naturresurser och jordbruksvetenskap | ||||||
Department: | (NL, NJ) > Dept. of Energy and Technology | ||||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||||
Deposited On: | 20 Aug 2020 07:59 | ||||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 15 Jan 2021 19:46 |
Repository Staff Only: item control page