Phosphorus recovery from human urine

A process to recover nutrients from human urine was tested at the Institute of Environmental Engineering (ISA) of RWTH Aachen University. Before testing the recovery process the urine was stored and the decomposition processes during this period were observed. Throughout the storage the pH value and the concentration of ammonia nitrogen increased, the concentration of phosphate phosphorus decreased. These variances can be speed up by addition of urease. The recovery process is easy to handle and approx. 99% of the load of phosphate phosphorus was eliminated and transferred into the product. Analysing the product indicators for struvite could be identified. The final step of the process is the stripping of the remaining ammonia-nitrogen by air followed by a gas washing