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Conference paper2016Peer reviewedOpen access

Resource Recovery and Recycling in Sanitation is key to Health, Water and Food Security

Simha, Prithvi; Mathew, Melvin; Jain, Pulak; Ganesapillai, P.

Abstract

The present study argues that the issue of sanitation and the solutions to it extends far beyond its mere access; any envisioned improvement in sanitation technology must strive to rectify the shortcomings in centralized wastewater treatment wherein end-of-pipe technologies have been favored. It is evident that with the concurrent trends of projected population growth and urbanization, the provisioning of improved sanitation facilities will necessitate greater efforts and socio-technical innovations than those in place today. We thus illustrate that simultaneous provisioning of 'access' and 'improved sanitation' through urine diversion and resource recovery can help create multiple-win scenarios in developing countries especially in terms of health, food and water security. As a pathway for initiating circularity in flow of resources from sanitation to agriculture, we demonstrate a process that enables continuous recycling of nutrients (urea) following the source separation of urine from a urine diversion toilet. To do this, we look towards cyclical adsorption-desorption systems in a fixed-bed column packed with renewable agrowaste based activated carbon. The study places emphasis on the sorption optimization for which a Box-Behnken experimental design with Response Surface Methodology was applied. It was concluded that a column bed depth of 45.45 cm, urine flow rate of 2 L.h(-1) and initial concentration of 20% allows 87.53% recovery of urea from human urine. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords

Sustainable agriculture; Circular economy; Ecological sanitation; Human urine; Column optimization; Activated carbon

Published in

Procedia technology
2016, volume: 25, pages: 201-207
Publisher: Elsevier

Conference

1st Global Colloquium on Recent Advancements and Effectual Researches in Engineering, Science and Technology - RAEREST 2016 on April 22nd & 23rd April 2016, Palai, Kerala, India

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences and Nature Conservation

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.protcy.2016.08.098

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/88319