Urine concentration (building a network of actors working with urine concentration)

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  • Jsenecal
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  • Bioresource engineer with PhD in Safe Nutrient Recovery from Human Urine – System and Hygiene Evaluation. Now working on the commercialization of the urine drying technology.
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Re: Urine concentration (building a network of actors working with urine concentration)

Hi Heiner, thanks for the question. Majority of the nitrogen is in the form of urea. But how soluble/accessible it is, I do not know at the moment. It is something that we will be analyzing in the coming months in preparation of next year's fertilizer batch. Curious, do you remember how much nitrogen you applied and how often? It was recommended to use 150 kg N/ha, but we have started 100 kg/ha.

Cheers,
Jenna 
_____________________________________
Jenna Senecal, PhD.
Environmental Engineering Grp.
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Research: blogg.slu.se/kretsloppsteknik/
Company: sanitation360.se

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  • Heiner
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  • I am a retired organic farmer and interested in nutrient cycles. As an volunteer I now travel mainly to poor countries and together with locals I would like to find new ways of sustainable agriculture. This is beyond the regulations of IFOAM.
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Re: Urine concentration (building a network of actors working with urine concentration)

Hi Jenna,

just a short question. What kind of nitrogen (solubility) is in your dried fertilizer: urea, ammonium or nitrate? 
I grew barley myself and to receive a good quality (low protein content!) it was quite important to have a quick starter. If the plants get the nitrogen in a late phase we had too much protein and the brewery was not really keen for the barley.

Cheers,
Heiner
Heiner, the old farmer.....
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  • Wolase
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Re: Urine concentration (building a network of actors working with urine concentration)

Thanks for this initiative. I'm interested by the topic. 

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  • Jsenecal
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  • Bioresource engineer with PhD in Safe Nutrient Recovery from Human Urine – System and Hygiene Evaluation. Now working on the commercialization of the urine drying technology.
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Re: Urine concentration (building a network of actors working with urine concentration)

Thanks for starting this Jennifer! To share some exciting news about urine concentration, we (at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science) have used dried urine in a seed driller. We stabilized and dried urine into a powder (7.2% nitrogen) and planted barley seeds with the dried urine directly.  The barley will be used to produce beer. This is part of a three year project in Sweden with the aim to customize the dried urine fertilizer for barley production.
_____________________________________
Jenna Senecal, PhD.
Environmental Engineering Grp.
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Research: blogg.slu.se/kretsloppsteknik/
Company: sanitation360.se
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  • jrmcconville
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  • I have a background in environmental engineering and planning with a focus on sanitation and wastewater management. My research focuses on resource recovery using concepts of sustainability, life-cycle thinking, participation, serious gaming and decision-support frameworks to better understand and shape planning processes.
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Urine concentration (building a network of actors working with urine concentration)

There are a number of technologies that are being tested at pilot scales for concentrating urine into fertilizer products. The concept of urine concentration is to remove the large volumes of water in urine to create a fertilizer product that has similar nutrient concentrations was commercial fertilizers. The advantage of urine concentration is that it makes transportation and storage of urine products easier as the volumes can be significantly reduced, as well as making it a more attractive fertilizer for agriculture use.

As many of these technologies are still developing, there can be many opportunities for learning and sharing experiences. By learning from each other we can increase knowledge diffusion, improve the technologies and hopefully increase the recovery of resources from urine.

Is there interest in this community for building a network of actors working with urine concentration? I have started a LinkedIn group that can be a discussion and networking platform (Urine Concentration @ LinkedIn) – welcome to join!

We can also continue the conversation on this Forum thread. Welcome to share your experience and knowledge related to urine concentration.
Dr. Jennifer McConville
Associate Professor

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Department of Energy and Technology
Environmental Engineering
Box 7032, SE-750 07 UPPSALA
Telephone: +46 18-672 816
Mobile: +46 76 783 7084
Skype: jrmcconville
Blogg: blogg.slu.se/kretsloppsteknik/
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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