I have seen a WIDE variety of toilets, over 20 years in the field supporting, building, and assisting with maintaining them, alot of UDTs,seeing them 10-20 years after initial construction & start up. Some poorly operated ones ARE indeed really bad.... Some we come across are abandoned permanently and we sample them to observe and learn from all cases....Many don't admit to the "dark side" of poor UDT applications....they exists and they are point sources of contamination. Some lay out of operation, then restarted when migrating family comes home or someone buys home with toilet built by other....I remember this particular toilet - it was sealed up really tight, this village was very humid, and it did smell really bad....I too doubted that it could be full blown H2SO4, and appreciate your clarification that it could have been a mild acid...any details you have to share on "chemically" what the acid would look like, I would be interested in seeing it...always like to learn. By the way, I don't assume anything when it comes to sealing human waste up tight in vaults....I have seen everything from extremely desiccated dust as an end product, to a wet mess in vaults due to visiting individuals urinating in the vaults during a party. I respected the observation made by the Mexican technician and remained open to his observation since the vault was one of those extreme cases. Thanks for the feedback

DrBates:
Sounds more like a sealed potty with air-tight cover and no air inlet thus producing hydrogen sulfide. That's not a UDDT. Sounds more like an evil experiment.

Regarding the formation of sulfuric acid from hydrogen sulfide, this doesn't normally occur in nature. The H₂S can dissolve in water and produce a mild acid but it is nothing at all like H₂SO₄. To produce sulfuric acid requires an oxidative process from sulfur dioxide, not the conditions of that "toilet". H₂S toxicity could explain the skin irritation. This is a noxious and highly toxic substance. www.alken-murray.com/H2SREM9.HTM

But the good thing about H₂S is that is is easily detectable because it smells so bad. No one with any normal level of olfactory capacity would want to come anywhere near such a "toilet".

Good you added the ventilation which also enhances drying. And you got your PhD to boot!
--Arno

H2S AND SULFURIC ACID ????
Back in the 1980's in our early years, once a user of a UDDT (aka "composting toilet") reported that the underside of his leg was being "burned" evidenced by a rash on the underside of his leg that he believed was a result of sitting on the seat of his UDDT. It was investigated, and believed that hydrogen sulfide may have been being released, mixing with humidity in the chamber, converted to sulfuric acid (H2SO4), and precipitated out on the seat. We added ventilation to that toilet, and more or less, insisted that future models, include the vent pipe, whether the person/program believed the vaults produced "offensive odors" or not. For that particular home, we designed & built a toilet seat with a special toilet lid (with a fabric as part of the lid) that allowed the toilet to "breathe" and expel more gas through the seat, in case the vent pipe was not achieving adequate ventilation. Whether H2S was being produced or not, depends of course on what type of process (aerobic vs. anaerobic) is going on in the toilet and different parts of the pile at the time; this can change of course over time, with amount of lime added, if urine is introduced accidentally, level of moisture in the pile, that can be affected by the season and weather.

Hi Markanday,

Thanks for your comment.
Can we create conditions in which H2S does not get produced?
Can ''finished biosolids'', used as cover material, absorb or consume H2S?
Welcome to the Forum. Please tell us more about yourself.

(Joe, that eThekwini Municipality mentions health risks from extracting biosolids from properly used UDDTs is apparently due to psychology and social norms, not documented cases of people getting sick. So many people, including you, have the mindset that ''once feces, always feces, thus the world human population is gradually converting all of the non-feces in the biosphere into feces.'' The biosolids that come out of a properly used UDDT are not feces any more, based on microbiology or any other variable you choose. They had been feces for a while and before that they were other things, including soil if we turn the clock back far enough. There may be some Ascaris eggs, but we can fine tune things to control them also, as I have done here in Ecuador.)

Best wishes,
Chris Canaday

It is mainly H2S ( Hydrogen Sulphide) which emanates during the dehydration process of excreta confined in the vault. Ventilation just facilitates the safe passage of this gas to higher up in the atmosphere or else it would give very smelly in th toilet enclosure as well as the premises. .

Hi everyone,

Just a couple of comments on this important subject of smell.

Why do we not see more on-going research on the gases actually being emitted from different toilets? Can't air samples be analyzed somewhat easily in gas chromatographs (if researchers have access to these)? What about the university projects funded by the Gates Foundation?

On this front, I would encourage researchers to look at the effect of using physically, chemically and biologically complex soil/"finished biosolids" as cover material in UDDTs, since they may absorb/consume these gases before they get out.

Best wishes,
Chris Canaday

Composting is an aerobic process. Aerobic processes yield water and carbon dioxide. Odors from sanitation systems are due to hydrogen sulfide and ammonia gases. Methane is not a odorous gas.

Arno: That article: "Understanding the Generation and Chemistry of Odours," was informative. Thank you

F H Mughal

Dear Elizabeth and others

"a ventilation unit to provide air to ensure aerobic conditions, to allow water to evaporate and to vent odorous gases."

Ventilation unit is not for providing air to waste. It is only for exit of gases.Inside compost pit there is always a bit higher pressure of gases than atmospheric pressure and air can't flow against the pressure gradient. Air flow will always be from pit to atmosphere through vent pipe.
Anaerobic condition can't be ruled out in any pit toilet/ composting toilet or septic tank. Odor is due to hydrogen sulphide and ammonia, methane is odorless.
Aerobic condition can be provided only through forced aeration in composting toilets. It has never been reported so far. However, for waste water treatment there are technologies based on forced aeration. In such case only carbon dioxide gas is produced, that is odorless.
regards
pawan

It may well be true that dehydration and urine diversion has an important impact on gas release and odors.

But in terms of a composting toilet specifically, I agree with Geoffrey Hill, Susan Baldwin and Björn Vinnerås when they state:

Numerous composting toilet studies indicate a failure to produce sanitized material let alone stable and mature compost low in foreign matter as defined above due to a variety of causes including: poor design, overuse, insufficient maintenance, low temperatures, anaerobic conditions, and excessive urine.

I also agree with their conclusion that if thermophyllic temperatures are not reached in composting toilets, they can hardly be said to be composting at all.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479713000169

I also agree with others who suggest that the amount of anaerobic conditions in a composting toilet will depend on the moisture content, which may be hard to control in any given circumstance - for example Miguel Angel Lopez Zavalaa and Naoyuki Funamizum suggest low dry matter contents produce both aerobic and anaerobic conditions in a composting toilet.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1065...0702242#.VRa1dWMRc6I

The measured gas releases reported in the above doctoral thesis indicate that the study dry toilets were imperfectly aerobic.

As Chirjiv Anand and Defne Apul state:

Adequate aeration is necessary to maintain aerobic conditions for composting. Lack of oxygen in the pile can cause anaerobic conditions which leads to odor issues and lowers the rate of composting.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X13004923

Indoor composting systems have limited air, by necessity because it in an enclosed space. In my view this means that it is highly likely that there are considerable amounts of a composting toilet which are actually anaerobic. Furthermore, even industrial composting systems with forced oxygen lose ammonia and methane, suggesting these too have considerable amounts of anaerobic conditions in the heap.

Controlling the moisture content, temperature, C/N ratio, size of storage space, type of carbon material, surface area etc will all impact on the amount of oxygen in the compost and therefore the overall aerobic status, but I still agree with Hill et al. that the notion of aerobic composting toilets is essentially a misnomer. With actually measuring the gas releases, I cannot see how one could tell whether the anaerobic sites are overall large or small.

When and where the odors become a problem is almost entirely related to local conditions and management. It might also be true that reports of people failing to use installed facilities due to the smell reflect cultural expectations rather than large amounts of odor/gas released by them.

Hi,
would like to contribute from my understanding:

a) I think it is important not to mix thinking about UDDT and composting toilets - partly similar but processes are different.

b) Definitely Methane is odorless and stays like that even mixed with other gases. The other gases might be smelly but never methane.

c) I think it is worthless to be discussing if in a normal well composting toilet (not composting heap as this relates to composting toilets with different organic, protein etc loading) are some tiny spots anaerobic. As Marjin pointed out - predominantly aerobic describes it well as that is the important aspect.

d)

particularly when the heap is turned - and you tend to feel it at the back of the throat.

This is typical for NH3, as by turning large amounts of NH3 are freed – and is probably due to the much higher protein concentrations. In my knowledge not the case in composting toilets.

e) I heard sometimes about complains of smell from the ventilation of composting toilets – maybe somebody with more experience can add if this is normal or part of a not so well maintained or overloaded toilet.

Regards
Christoph

I wonder if the conditions are particularly different in a UDDT to a sewer with regard to gas: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewer_gas

OK, of course there industrial effluents in a sewer, but the smell is, I think, mostly from organic gases. I also don't know if the mixing of methane with ammonia etc makes a bad smell worse - although I can confirm that the smell associated with industrial composting of faeces is high, particularly when the heap is turned - and you tend to feel it at the back of the throat.

Exactly the conditions where the smell becomes unbearable in a UDDT or from a latrine I don't know, but would assume it is to do with the amount of available oxygen with the faeces.

Marijn Zandee wrote: Methane is indeed odorless.

Nit picking here: pure methane yes, but biogas often smells quite a bit due to other gasses included, and commercially available methane usually has a smelly compound added for security reasons.

A bit OT: are there any studies under which conditions UDDTs turn smelly? My experience is that they do when overloaded (too many people using them in too short time), which of course makes sense due to lacking time to dry. But has there been studies recommending number of users per time relative to air humidity and temperature (and dry material added)?
It seems to me that overloaded UDDTs is one of the main reason why people stop using them.