4.7 Article

Potential benefits and environmental life cycle assessment of equipping buildings in dense cities for struvite production from source-separated human urine

Journal

JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION
Volume 143, Issue -, Pages 288-302

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.12.111

Keywords

Source-separated urine; Phosphorus recovery; Life cycle assessment; Energy consumption

Funding

  1. Hong Kong Research Grants Council [611113]
  2. Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission [ITC-CNERC14EG03]

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The risk of a worldwide phosphorus (P) crisis has been predicted in the past ten years by many researchers and organizations who sought alternative resources of P. Source-separation of urine is being widely considered as a suitable waste stream for P recovery to mitigate the shortage of P while also preventing the eutrophication of receiving waters. In dense cities, urine separation and P recovery as struvite can be efficiently implemented in every building. In order to evaluate the impact of the urine separation and P recovery system in buildings, this study determines the potential amounts of P recovered, freshwater saved, and the environmental impacts of the large-scale production of struvite from source-separated human urine in both typical residential and office buildings in dense cities. The results show that the net struvite production amounts in a typical dense city can cover the diammonium phosphate (DAP) fertilizer consumptions in many countries and the net freshwater saving amounts can be up to 47-87 L/(person.d). These benefits can be achieved with less than 03% additional energy consumption and 1% additional environmental emissions compared with conventional buildings. Moreover, the use of environmental friendly materials can further reduce the environmental emissions to a significant extent. Therefore, based on the results obtained in this study, the urine separation and P recovery system is strongly recommended to be implemented in buildings of dense cities. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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