Hello Muench! I must say that's a great initiative there. From what I read on their website and comments followed on here, it seems the liquid fertilizer works really well. My observation is however that so far, I see it workable with small scale home gardening. I do not know how practical it would be to use same in say large scale palm or banana plantations. I also would have loved to see something on the comparative cost, given that the fertilizer market is a very competitive one. Would be nice to know how user friendly the plant is as that will depend on how comfortable adopting the technology will be. I hope Africa will be able to benefit from this technology. Please keep us posted on any updates!

Aurin is a very good fertilizer.
I used it in Annecy for two months on some tomato plants in parallel with simply diluted urine.
The two methods work equally well with the Solar-Dripper application.
Diluted urine is free and OK for your personal garden. Aurin is a concentrated and stable purified product which is an ecological alternative to chemical fertilizers. Aurin is a solution to transform urine produced in city centers without anough gardens or trees to use the urine directly.

Many have tested those tomatoes fertiliszed with Aurin and diluted urine in Stockholm, Lyon, Dijon, Lyon, Geneva and Lausanne.

Their laboratory in Zurich is very well organized. Reaseachers' urine is collected by separate plumbing and treated in the basement.

solar-dripper.com/en/how-to-use-urine-fertilizer/

It works like a liquid fertilizer.

Robert

Dear all,
during the last year I had some contact to one guy from VUNA. I am very glad to see an invention like this made in the center of europe with enough rainfall and enough money to by all fertiliser needed. But the idea to close the loop is obviously borderless

What I like most: their process is really close to perfect in terms of saving the nutrients: 4,2% N, 0,4% P205 and 1,8% K20 in the fertiliser is very close to the content in fresh urine. Lots of offered commercial organic fertilisers show a lack of nitrogen due to the process of manufacturing.

But what we need as farmers, thinking in big scale, is: what will be the price for the product in different countries and is their a fair chance to run a process plant like this without two well skilled engineers sleeping right next to it??
Are you VUNA guys testing this plant in south-africa (RUNRES)?

Regards,
Heiner

Hi,
From time to time people ask about examples where reuse of excreta has been done in a commercially successful way. For that reason, I want to draw your attention to aurin which is apparently "The world’s first urine fertilizer with complete approval" and being marketed in Switzerland and France now.

I don't know anything else about it other than what is on their website: www.vuna.ch/aurin/index_en.html
Also, I was told they are currently really busy with launching this and meeting their first orders so they don't have time to post here themselves. Nevertheless, I thought it's useful to make you aware of this venture in Switzerland.

It's a liquid fertiliser production from sorce-separated urine, a process developped by VUNA, a spin-off from Eawag:



They have a mobile Aurin production unit called the "UrinExpress". Stay tuned for more information or check out their (small) website in the meantime.

Regards,
Elisabeth