Urine-diverting toilet in Nature
The REWAISE project is testing an innovative toilet system, where the urine is dried and transformed into a dry plant fertilizer - directly under the toilet. The prestigious magazine Nature writes about the technology in the news article The urine revolution: how recycling pee could help to save the world.
Photo: Jenna Senecal
By sorting out the urine, most of the nutrients can be recycled from the sewage. The researchers from SLU, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, have developed the new technology and are commercilizing it within the company Sanitation360.
The article, The urine revolution: how recycling pee could help to save the world, in Nature takes up several examples from different parts of the world and shows how to use urine sorting and what benefits it can provide. One of the examples is the new toilet system that is located at VA SYD’s head office in Malmö and which is part of the REWAISE project.
The technology and the challenges also get a long article in The Source which is a magazine from IWA, International Water Associations: The disruptive opportunity for mainstreaming urine recycling.
“Our technology is the first of its kind that converts all nutrients from urine into a pure, dry plant fertilizer directly under the toilet. There is no need to change the pipes in the property, which makes it possible to install the system in both new and old properties. The step from development in our lab at SLU to the first implementation of the prototype is crucial for us to be able to scale up our work”, says Jenna Senecal, researcher and co-developer of the technology at SLU.
Within the REWAISE project, two additional prototypes of the new toilet systems will be installed in 2022 – in Lund and Malmö, Sweden.