Why not keep the pee and poop mixed, and use it to harvest biomethane? Effluent can still be used as fertilizer after capturing the gas.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S097308261...
Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems
21–30 of 120 posts
Re: Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems
#22All that processing sounds expensive, how about the direct approach?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-09/diabetic-hiker-lost-a...
Re: Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems
#23> That’s in part because urine is rich in nutrients that, instead of polluting water bodies, could go towards fertilizing crops or feed into industrial processes. Huh? We're already producing way too much fertilizer from farm animals, which leads to the situation that countries like the Netherlands [1] and Germany [2] experience a massive oversupply of dung that has to be shipped sometimes hundreds of kilometers beca…
We could also stop producing so much dung...
Re: Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems
#24Anything but to sanction illegal activities of corporations who are doing the real damage to the Earth.
Re: Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems
#25No post body was provided.
Re: Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems
#26Brewery creates ‘Pisner’ beer using 50,000 litres of urine collected at music festival (Denmark, 2017):
https://www.nme.com/news/music/new-pisner-beer-urine-from-mu...
Re: Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems
#27The traditional thing is you mix urine with wood ash. This returns all the nutrient salts to the soil, and nitrogen.
My one concern is sodium accumulation. There are some thermal approaches based on solubility curves that sort of work. I'd also be interested in electrochemical and, ideally, biological approaches (can we use biological cell membranes and ion pumps instead of manufactured ones?).
Weighing difficulty against impact, this seems under-researched.
Re: Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems
#28Brewery creates ‘Pisner’ beer using 50,000 litres of urine collected at music festival (Denmark, 2017): https://www.nme.com/news/music/new-pisner-beer-urine-from-mu...
I guess Pißwasser was already taken from Grand Theft Auto.
Re: Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems
#29All that processing sounds expensive, how about the direct approach? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-09/diabetic-hiker-lost-a...
Ew.
Re: Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems
#30Drying urine, transporting it, this is extremely energy intensive. There's a much simpler solution: composting toilets. Easy to setup, requires very little input (basically just some dry material like wood shavings (i.e. waste from wood processing that you can sometimes get for free) and you're done. The "humanure" mixed with the dry material goes in a compost bin, sits there for two years, then can be applied to the local garden without any problem. If you have a vegetable/fruit garden you're actually closing a loop - giving back to your garden a good chunk of what it gave your body.