Most of the nutrients in municipal wastewater originate from urine. Nevertheless, chemical fertilizers are commonly used in the agriculture instead of urine. There are some problems related to the direct utilization of urine, such as micropollutants present in urine, odour and storage of large volume of urine. In wastewater, phosphorus may contribute significantly to the pollution of the aquatic systems. Therefore, wastewater treatment techniques are mainly focusing on removing phosphorus. Phosphorus is collected in the sludge either by a chemical or by a biological process. With the growing concern of micropollutants present, which are in the sludge, the use of sludge in agriculture has been gradually decreasing. It means that the phosphorus content in sludge is not recycled efficiently whereas the use of limited mineral phosphorus resources is growing. To overcome these issues, urine could be collected separately and struvite could be produced. This may recover about 90 % of phosphate in urine. In this paper, the use of human urine and struvite as a fertilizer in the agriculture and the production of struvite is discussed. Results showed that the struvite could be an effective natural fertilizer.
The aim of our study is to explore and compare the environmental impacts and the sustainability of two different human excreta collection and treatment methods. We systematized and compared the environmental impacts of flush toilet based water infrastructure and composting of human excreta. Among the factors examined the energy demand of wastewater treatment, the nitrogen and phosphorus loading caused by purified sewage emission, the loss of nutrients of human excreta, the quantity of fertilizer used for increase soil productivity are highlighted and presented by Hungarian data. According to our approximate calculations, the excreta which are produced by humans in Hungary contain about 35-70 thousand tons of nitrogen, 4-13 thousand tons of phosphorus, 6-16 thousand tons of potassium annually. In spite of this human excreta are considered as waste which must be clear away as fast as possible by water. Meanwhile increasing amount of chemical fertilizers are used -but soil nutrient supply based on chemical fertilization cannot be sustainable in the long term. The solution would be the utilization of composted excreta in the agriculture.
The aim of our study is to give an assessment of the dry toilets by evaluating their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. More and more environmentalists consider the use of dry toilets as the solution for solving the problems caused by the utilization of flush toilets. With the application of flush toilet, in addition to its harmful environmental effects and to the high water consumption of toilet, the nutrients in the human excreta are wasted. However, there are some misconceptions about the environmental effects of dry toilets, and we are not aware of the fact, that some type of dry toilets also has unfavourable environmental effects. SWOT analysis is an initialism for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It can be carried out not only for projects and a business venture, but also for a product or a technical solution. With the application of SWOT analysis we assessed and compared the different types of dry toilets by evaluating the above mentioned four elements of them. We evaluate the incinerating toilets and the two main groups of composting toilets: types which treat the human faeces and urine together and types which separate them. A third type, the so-called microflush toilets is also examined. Identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is important because they can inform later steps in planning to achieve the objective: which methods and technical solutions are the best for our environment. We are convinced that the best technical solution is, which allows the composting of human excreta in order to recirculate it to the cycle of biosphere.
UDC: 552.54:911.2(410) 551.435.2(410) Aniko Zseni & Helen Goldie & Ilona Bárány-Kevei: Limestone pavements in Great Britain and the role of soil cover in their evolution The goal of the research was to verify the connection between the solutional power of soil and the shape of rocky features in limestone. Soil samples from runnels, grikes, foot of pavements, top of limestone, grass patches and dolines were collected on limestone pavement areas of North England and examined for the pH and carbonate content. The results of the measurements proved that the soils with lower pH are related to deeper solution features and that proximity to limestone causes a higher soil-pH.
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