BRIDGE News

The Centre of Biological Engineering at the University of Minho is producing electricity and fertilizer from human urine. This European project, entitled "Value from Urine", already caught the interest of the North American Aerospace Agency (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA).

The goal is to produce, initially, a P rich fertilizer by precipitation of struvite and secondly, using a microbial fuel cell capable of generating electricity from the remaining carbon content or in alternative to use a microbial electrolisys cell to obtain a fertilizer rich in nitrogen. "The recovery from urine separately from other components of domestic wastewater is based on the concept of decentralized sanitation, which can be applied in remote areas or developing nations without sewage systems and electrical networks. This is a process that relies on the separation and reuse of polluted water currents generated in each house ", said Madalena Alves, Professor at UMinho and coordinator of the project at national level.

For example, the waters of the baths and the washing of clothes can be reused in toilet flushing. On the other hand, the black water with concentrated pollutants should be separated from water-called 'grey', which have low levels of contamination, allowing a differentiated treatment according to the degree of pollution. The separate collection of urine is one step further in the concept of decentralized sanitation. This system is more efficient and sustainable than the current model of centralized sanitation adopted in most Western countries, "explains the researcher from UMinho. The "Value from Urine" account with funding from the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union and coordinated by Wetsus Institute in the Netherlands.

Madalena Alves graduated from the Faculty of Engineering of Porto University and did his Masters in Biochemical Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico. She is full professor at Uminho since 2013 and vice-director of the Center for Biological Engineering UMinho. She was supervisor or co-supervisor of 28 R & D projects, and 14 international cooperation projects in the area of environmental biotechnology. She has supervised 20 PhD students and more than 30 MSc students. Madalena was awarded in 2009 an honorary doctorate by the University of IASI, Romania.

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