Summit Day 2 Intro
9:20-9:30 am EST
Virtual and In-Person
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: Resource Recovery Regulatory Pathways
9:30-10:30 am EST
Virtual and In-Person
Kai Udert
Moderator
Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag)
PANELISTS:
Pat Lando
Recode, Oregon, USA
Pat Lando has been a leader in nature-based solutions for over 30 years and holds many positions in the field of water reuse and resource recovery. Pat is the Executive Director of Recode, a nonprofit organization that creates sustainable and equitable building code and policy solutions for water, sanitation and nutrient recovery systems. Intentionally collaborative, his leadership finds solutions by convening regulators, technical experts, community leaders, legislators and impacted communities. Pat is the co-chair of the National Gold Ribbon Commission for Urine Reuse, and in 2021 he joined the People’s Water Project steering committee to help the coalition draft national water and sanitation related policies.
Recode, Oregon, USA
Mathew Lippincott
Mathew Lippincott is a technical writer who has worked on reform of building mechanical codes since 2010. Mathew led writing of the IAPMO/ANSI WE Stand chapter on composting and urine diverting toilets, and is currently working with the University of Michigan's Food, Ecology & Equity: Designing Circular Nutrition Production (FEED CNP) program on regulatory pathways for urine diversion in Michigan.
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University of Texas, Austin
Aleksandra Jaeschke
Aleksandra Jaeschke is an architect and an Assistant Professor of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin. Born and raised in Poland, she holds a Doctor of Design degree from the Harvard GSD and an AA Diploma from the Architectural Association in London.
PAE Consulting Engineers
John Lansing
John Lansing is a lead plumbing designer at PAE, a consulting engineering firm in Portland, Oregon. John specializes in applying sustainable solutions to plumbing systems and research on international engineering design guidance. He also serves on the technical committees for the IAPMO Water Efficiency and Sanitation Standard (WEStand) and the ICC 815 Standard for Sizing Water Distribution Sanitary Drainage and Vent Piping Systems.
PANEL: Urine Processing Startups
10:40 - 11:50 am EST
Virtual and In-Person
Jenna Senecal
Sanitation360, Sweden
Live Presentation via Zoom: Sanitation360 - Urine Processing as a Business
Previously we presented about how we make and use the urine fertilizer. This year we will present on how we got the company starting and how we are currently financing the fertilizer production and where we are aiming to be in 5 years. We are still pre-commercial and dependent on soft funds to operate. We will share the business model, target markets, and pilot projects that we have running.
Nadège de Chambrier
VunaNexus, Switzerland
Live Presentation via Zoom: Urine nitrification in Switzerland and Europe, updates from VunaNexus
After many years of development and optimisation in the swiss water research institute Eawag, the urine nitrification technology, often called Vuna-Technology is now being further industrialised and sold by the company VunaNexus. In this presentation, you will understand how the technology works, what its products are and hear updates about the latest advancements.
Orion Herman
LiquidGold Africa, South Africa
Live Presentation via Zoom: Maximize the flow
How source separation with gender neutral urinals can impact the flow of resources thus making the business model more sustainable for nutrient reclamation.
Abe Noe-Hays and Kim Nace
Brightwater Tools, Vermont, USA
In-Person Presentation: Brightwater Tools: Building the Business Case for Source-Separation
For building developers to adopt nutrient recovery and water reuse strategies in a widespread way, they must see a financial benefit. Brightwater Tools, Inc., an NSF-funded spinoff of the Rich Earth Institute, is dedicated to developing and supplying equipment for processing source-separated wastewater, which will enable buildings of the future to cost-effectively employ onsite resource-recovering wastewater treatment. In this presentation, we will discuss our observations of the business climate surrounding the adoption of these new technologies and present our vision of a cooperative, collaborative future.
Julien Saludas
Toopi Organics, France
Live Presentation via Zoom: Unleash the power of urine to produce microbial biofertilizers: Experience from France and Belgium
TBA
Catered Lunch
12:00 - 12:40 pm EST
In-Person Only, included in In-Person ticket
Virtual Bulletin Board
We will share a virtual bulletin board where participants can add announcements, ideas, and opportunities for collaboration. This board will be shared with all attendees after the Summit.
PANEL: Urine Treatment and Processing Research
(part 1)
12:40 - 2:00 pm EST
Virtual and In-Person
Nebiyat Nigusie Woldeyohannis
Addis Ababa University, Ethopia
Fate of antibiotic resistance genes and their carriers through preparation of struvite from source separated urine
Struvite is an ecofriendly fertilizer especially when it is derived from human urine since this approach addresses sanitation issue too. In our study using sequencing of microbial genomes and using bio-informatics tools, we found different antibiotic resistance genes and their carriers in both stored urine and struvite. We found in struvite even after urine sanitization the resistance to aminoglycosides, carbapenem, chloramphenicol and erythromycin and efflux pump, with top carrying pathogens including Acinetobacter, Aeromonas and Enterococcus. The identified families of the antibiotics were shown persistent in struvite with a shift in gene families. On the other hand, metagenome-derived genome sequence analysis revealed the dominance of phages of Streptococcus, Bacillus and Escherichia in struvite. This indicates the abundance of carriers, the phages to antibiotic resistance genes. In addition, in our study plasmid sequences were spotted in genomic sequences using machine learning tool. Among the spotted plasmids most of them were blasted on NCBI and found to carry antibiotic resistance genes including the last resort antibiotics. The detection of the resistance-gene-carriers (mobilomes) in the struvite sample requires due attention before implementation of struvite in agriculture. Further standardization of the struvite production process with regard to minimization of resistance gene carriers is recommended.
John Culpepper
Compost for Good, New York, USA
Urine to High Value Compost: A Viable Model?
Compost for Good received funding to establish a small Human Urine Research and Demonstration (HURD) facility in Upstate NY to try and show the economic viability of processing diverted human urine through a high temperature composting regimen. We will show the results of a variety of experiments in which we’ve produced a high value, biologically robust compost that meets or exceeds the EPA Class A biosolids standards. We will discuss creating recipes using only urine, sawdust, and water, and recipes incorporating food scraps, and how our urine/sawdust recipe can enhance the composting of food wastes. We will discuss/show our Penn State physical analysis along with our analysis of the soil microbes.
Harold Leverenz
UC Davis / Biohabitats / AEM, California, USA
Live presentation via Zoom: Observations from one year demonstration of urine collection and nutrient recovery at a highway rest area
A one year study was conducted at a highway rest area in California along I-5. Urine from waterless urinals was diverted into a collection system and pumped to a nutrient recovery site. At the nutrient recovery site, urine was stored in above ground tanks to allow for hydrolysis. Urine was processed weekly using a coupled steam distillation and struvite process. It was found that the chemistry of the struvite could be modulated based on the operation of the steam distillation process. Struvite was produced with variable fractions of ammonium, potassium, and sodium. Some implications for energy efficiency, overall nutrient recovery, and system operations will be discussed.
Veera Koskue
University of Melbourne, Australia
Live presentation via Zoom: Nutrient recovery from urine using the UGold technology: Upscaling from laboratory to pilot scale
UGold is a bioelectroconcentration technology designed to recover key nutrients (nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus) from urine as a concentrated liquid fertiliser. It is an electrochemical system where the anodic oxidation reactions are catalysed by bacteria that are able to convert the chemical energy in urine to electrical energy. The electricity generated by the bacteria is used to drive the migration of the nutrients (all present in urine in their ionic forms) through ion-exchange membranes into a separate recovery chamber. The system only consumes electrical energy, requiring a small electricity input in addition to the electricity generated by the bacteria; no chemical additions are needed. The UGold technology has been studied extensively with synthetic and real human urine in laboratory scale. Based on the laboratory experience, we are currently trialling the system in pilot scale as part of the Nutrients in a Circular Economy (NiCE) research hub (https://www.nicehub.org/). In this presentation, we are going to present solutions to technical and operational bottlenecks identified in earlier laboratory work and how these solutions have been incorporated in the pilot system design and operation.
Meili Gong
Stanford University, California, USA
Long-term electrochemical nitrogen recovery for flexible product recovery from urine
The selective recovery of nitrogen from urine can reduce the costs and environmental impacts of municipal wastewater treatment and produce valuable chemical feedstocks for the global fertilizer economy. Electrochemical methods of nitrogen recovery can achieve high selectivity and generate high-purity products, leveraging the high concentration of nitrogen and overall high conductivity of urine. Our group has studied electrochemical stripping (ECS) for recovering nitrogen from urine, focusing on the robustness of this technology for realistic operation and for the recovery of multiple chemical species. These operational factors include the long-term, continuous recovery of nitrogen from urine, as well as urine at varying flush water volumes, divalent cation concentrations, and extents of urea hydrolysis. Experiments were also conducted to characterize the recovery of ammonium hydroxide in addition to ammonium sulfate. We demonstrated successful long-term and continuous processing of urine for 35 days. We observed higher nitrogen recovery via ECS with higher extent of urea hydrolysis, lower divalent cation concentration, and lower urine flush volumes. These results suggest urine collection procedures such as using ultra low flush toilets and storing urine to allow complete hydrolysis of urea can optimize the performance of ECS units downstream. These findings advance our understanding of ECS technologies as at-scale resource recovery units in both centralized and decentralized wastewater treatment.
2 pm - 2:30 pm EST
During this session, visit the Virtual Exhibits page to to enter Zoom rooms hosted by companies from around the world. Videos from our in-person exhibitors are also posted on the Exhibits page. Discover their products, ask questions, and explore opportunities for collaboration!
Peecycling for Our Watershed: Regional Workshops
These regionally-themed workshops will provide attendees with an opportunity to connect and share ideas about growing peecycling programs in their watersheds.
WORKSHOP A: Connecticut River
The Connecticut River workshop will feature nutrient pollution challenges in the Long Island Sound and budding aims to establish a urine depot in Franklin County, MA, just across the border from Rich Earth’s program in VT. This workshop will facilitate creative, collective imagination about completing the food nutrient cycle in the Valley.
WORKSHOP B: Cape Cod
The Cape Cod workshop, addressing nutrient pollution in both ponds and the coast, will aim to support and grow momentum around the development of a urine diversion pilot program and provide further opportunity to deepen collaborations and envision paths forward for urine nutrient recycling on the Cape. This workshop will be held in a World Cafe style, facilitated by Talitha Abramsen.
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm EST
In-person Only