Experiments were conducted to measure the behaviour of eight pharmaceuticals during urine treatment as part of the project 'SANIRESCH - Sustainable sanitary recycling Eschborn'. Urine was collected from 200 people in a public building via waterless urinals and NoMix toilets. It was then stored at room temperature at different pH values to analyse the extent to which bacteria and pharmaceuticals are eliminated over time. Although a partial elimination of pharmaceuticals could be detected, the storage at defined pH values cannot be advised. As the persons tested used pharmaceuticals with different structures, in different amounts and at varying intervals, this method of treatment is insufficient for removing them from urine. Precipitating the urine with MgO, washing it with saturated struvite solution and drying it at 30 °C will result in a free-flowing granular powder of struvite (NH(4)MgPO(4)·6H(2)O) that is free of pharmaceuticals and pathogens and can be used as fertiliser and a source of nitrogen, magnesium and phosphorus.
A process to recover nutrients from human urine was tested at the Institute of Environmental Engineering (ISA) of RWTH Aachen University. Before testing the recovery process the urine was stored and the decomposition processes during this period were observed. Throughout the storage the pH value and the concentration of ammonia nitrogen increased, the concentration of phosphate phosphorus decreased. These variances can be speed up by addition of urease. The recovery process is easy to handle and approx. 99% of the load of phosphate phosphorus was eliminated and transferred into the product. Analysing the product indicators for struvite could be identified. The final step of the process is the stripping of the remaining ammonia-nitrogen by air followed by a gas washing
A novel catalyst was used for lab scale photocatalytic experiments. It was a carbon doped titanium dioxide which was designed to create an energy efficient photocatalytic process. The titanium dioxide is able to absorb UV‐A radiation and parts of the visible light spectrum. The catalyst was immobilized to a glass sheet. UV‐A radiation was used for the degradation of the pharmaceutical diclofenac in water to investigate the applicability of the catalyst to degrade organic micropollutants. With the given experimental setup hydroxyl radicals were generated and diclofenac was degraded below the limit of quantification. However, reaction rates are rather slow and the material properties of the catalyst showed the need of improvement. This is because the properties of the coating were influenced by the release of inorganic binder. Therefore, the coating and possibly the titanium dioxide were washed off and the reaction rates decreased drastically after 80 hours of use.
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