Full Nitrogen Recovery and Potable Water Production from Human Urine by Membrane Distillation

Human urine offers some interesting possibilities for ammonia and potable water recovery. Membrane distillation holds possible advantages over existing urine treatment technologies, specifically regarding ammonia recovery. It was shown that up to 95 m% of all ammonia present in hydrolyzed urine could be recovered by increasing the urine pH to 10.5 or higher within a period of 2 hours, with a maximal separation factor of up to 16. The possibility of potable water production was investigated in human urine by assessing the permeate water quality, maximum recovery and mid-term process stability. It was shown that at least 75% of the available water could be recovered from non-hydrolyzed human urine without process failure. As such, membrane distillation is a viable alternative for existing urine treatment. Introduction The invention of the Haber-Bosch process in the middle of the 20 century has had an enormous impact on human society, ranging from increased yields in agriculture and population growth to eutrophication and increased CO2 emissions. In 2008, nitrogen fixation through the Haber-Bosch process was responsible for up to 1-2% of the worldwide energy consumption while producing up to 130 million tonnes of ammonia fertilizer (Canfield et al., 2010). Even though the environmental issues and disadvantages of investing enormous amounts of energy in nitrogen fixation are hard to ignore, the incentive for nitrogen recycling is not driven by depletion, as nitrogen gas is naturally abundant in the air. In fact, the combination of Haber-Bosch and ‘recycling’ nitrogen by oxidizing it in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) brings the total energy tag up to 90 MJ kgN, as such that nitrogen recovery through e.g. struvite (102 MJ kg -1 N) or stripping (90 MJ kgN) cannot compete (Maurer et al., 2003). The road to increasing energy efficiency for the anthropogenic part of the nitrogen cycle therefore leads to a challenge: either the activation energy for the Haber-Bosch process is decreased (Kitani et al., 2012), or either the road leads to innovative nitrogen recycling treatment, using less resources, less exergy and less treatment steps.