Wastewater - Turning Problem to Solution

CASE STUDY 5

Producing urine-based fertilizer on the island of Gotland, Sweden Prithvi Simha , Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Energy and Technology, Sweden

Gotland, an island off the coast of Sweden, is a popular tourist destination, but suffers from severe water shortages and coastal eutrophication in the surrounding Baltic Sea, with wastewater treatment plants running at full capacity. In the ongoing N2Brew project on Gotland, which includes actors from the food and fertilizer industries, municipality, toilet rental companies and academia, the Swedish University of Agricultural

Sciences and Sanitation 360 are demonstrating how the urine nutrient loop can be closed. Fresh urine from dry urinals is being collected, chemically stabilized on-site, dried centrally and applied on farms to fertilize malting barley, which is used to produce beer. Already this year, 300 litres of urine have been dried and used to grow 25 kg of barley, and the goal is to produce 10 tonnes of barley during the summer of 2023.

©Jenna Senecal, Sanitation 360

Barley fertilized with dehydrated urine-based fertilizer on the island of Gotland, Sweden.

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