Larsen Tove A, Riechmann Michel E, Udert Kai M
Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland.
ETH Zürich, Institute of Environmental Engineering, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Water Res X. 2021 Aug 19;13:100114. doi: 10.1016/j.wroa.2021.100114. eCollection 2021 Dec 1.
Over the last 15 years, urine treatment technologies have developed from lab studies of a few pioneers to an interesting innovation, attracting attention from a growing number of process engineers. In this broad review, we present literature from more than a decade on biological, physical-chemical and electrochemical urine treatment processes. Like in the first review on urine treatment from 2006, we categorize the technologies according to the following objectives: stabilization, volume reduction, targeted N-recovery, targeted P-recovery, nutrient removal, sanitization, and handling of organic micropollutants. We add energy recovery as a new objective, because extensive work has been done on electrochemical energy harvesting, especially with bio-electrochemical systems. Our review reveals that biological processes are a good choice for urine stabilization. They have the advantage of little demand for chemicals and energy. Due to instabilities, however, they are not suited for bathroom applications and they cannot provide the desired volume reduction on their own. A number of physical-chemical treatment technologies are applicable at bathroom scale and can provide the necessary volume reduction, but only with a steady supply of chemicals and often with high demand for energy and maintenance. Electrochemical processes is a recent, but rapidly growing field, which could give rise to exciting technologies at bathroom scale, although energy production might only be interesting for niche applications. The review includes a qualitative assessment of all unit processes. A quantitative comparison of treatment performance was not the goal of the study and could anyway only be done for complete treatment trains. An important next step in urine technology research and development will be the combination of unit processes to set up and test robust treatment trains. We hope that the present review will help guide these efforts to accelerate the development towards a mature technology with pilot scale and eventually full-scale implementations.
在过去的15年里，尿液处理技术已从少数先驱者的实验室研究发展成为一项引人关注的创新技术，吸引了越来越多工艺工程师的目光。在这篇全面的综述中，我们展示了十多年来关于生物、物理化学和电化学尿液处理工艺的文献。与2006年首次关于尿液处理的综述一样，我们根据以下目标对技术进行分类：稳定化、体积减小、有针对性的氮回收、有针对性的磷回收、营养物去除、卫生处理以及有机微污染物的处理。我们增加了能量回收作为一个新目标，因为在电化学能量收集方面已经开展了大量工作，特别是在生物电化学系统方面。我们的综述表明，生物工艺是尿液稳定化的一个不错选择。它们具有对化学品和能源需求少的优势。然而，由于稳定性问题，它们不适合在浴室应用，而且它们自身无法实现所需的体积减小。一些物理化学处理技术适用于浴室规模，并且可以实现必要的体积减小，但前提是要有稳定的化学品供应，而且通常对能源和维护有很高要求。电化学工艺是一个新兴但发展迅速的领域，它可能会催生浴室规模的令人兴奋的技术，尽管能量生产可能只对特定应用有意义。该综述包括对所有单元工艺的定性评估。对处理性能进行定量比较并非本研究的目标，而且无论如何也只能针对完整的处理流程进行。尿液技术研发的一个重要的下一步将是组合单元工艺，以建立和测试稳健的处理流程。我们希望本综述将有助于指导这些努力，以加速向具有中试规模并最终实现全面实施的成熟技术发展。
