The Three Gorges Dam in Yichang, Hubei province, China has completed trial water storage operations. According to the World Health Organization, some 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water. (Reuters/FILE)
Should we recycle urine on Earth, too?
By Eoin O'Carroll | 11.26.08
After five days of tinkering, astronauts aboard the International Space Station ran their first successful test Tuesday of equipment that turns urine into drinking water.
Delivered to the station by the Space Shuttle Endeavour, the $154 million water recycling system, which also processes sweat and moisture from the air, is designed to quench astronauts’ thirst while requiring fewer costly resupply missions. Samples of the recycled water will be tested back on earth before astronauts aboard the station can start drinking from the system’s tap.
This raises a question: Can we build these things on earth? Maybe even for a little less than $154 million?
A thirsty planet
There’s definitely a need. According to the World Health Organization, some 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water. That’s almost 1 in 6 human beings. And according to the United Nations Development Programme, women and girls in developing countries collectively spend more than 10 million “person-years” hauling water from remote sources each year.
And it’s only getting worse. As a study published in Nature in April predicts that, by 2025 more than half of the world’s countries will face freshwater stress or shortages, and by 2050, as much as 75 percent of the world’s population could face freshwater scarcity.
A cheap and reliable urine-to-potable-water device could solve what is arguably the world’s No. 1 problem, so to speak.
It wouldn’t be the first time that NASA’s water-purification technology spins off into the developing world. In 2006, engineers from the space agency helped develop a system for the northern Iraqi village of Kendala, which filters and purifies water from nearby streams, wells, and swamps.
H20 is H20
If you think about it, enjoying a refreshing glass of erstwhile whiz is not as disgusting as it sounds. What is “new” water anyway? As NASA astronaut Sandra H. Magnus told the New York Times after pointing out that water flushed down our toilets eventually evaporates and rains down into our reservoirs. “We drink recycled water every day — on a little bit longer time scale.”
The concept of treating our bodily waste as a useful product is probably alien to most of us, but it hasn’t always been that way. In ancient Rome, human urine was put to work tanning leather and whitening togas. The stuff was so valuable that the 1st-century emperor Vespasian imposed a tax on it.
Is it technically possible?
Aside from revulsion, a major obstacle to widespread urine recycling is the energy needed. You can distill it, but that requires bringing it to a boil. If you’re the outdoors type, you may know how to construct a solar still – which uses a plastic sheet to create a sort of greenhouse effect to evaporate ground water and condense it into a cup.
The Watercone, a simple solar still designed to purify sea water, holds great promise as an inexpensive solution. But its maker remains silent on whether the award-winning device would work with urine.
Inventor Dean Kamen has no such reservations. The mind behind the Segway scooter appeared on the Colbert Report in March, claiming that his energy-sipping Slingshot vapor compression distiller could produce 1,000 liters of water a day out of any wet substance, including the ocean, a puddle, a chemical waste site, or “a 50-gallon drum of urine.”
But how does it taste?
The New York Times’s John Schwartz had the opportunity to sample NASA’s recycled water at the Kennedy Space Center. The verdict: “Not bad, actually,” although he noted that it tasted faintly of iodine, which was added to the water near the end of the process.
If these systems become widespread, we’ll need a way to rid our recycled-urine water of that iodine flavor. Camping shops often sell little vitamin C tablets along with their iodine purification crystals to cut the harsh taste. But you can save your money on those overpriced tablets by dropping in a pinch of a substance that, even after NASA perfects its recycling system, will continue to hold pride of place in the space program: Tang.
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2. Scott | 11.26.08
I’m an engineer and one thing engineers and Scientists understand is you can never get 1 for 1…you never have 100% efficiency. Obviously some of the water you drink gets absorbed by your body, but a lot of that will eventually come back out as sweat or saliva. Think about this. We could put a system that absorbs moisture in some of the more tropical areas that are 100% humidity almost year roung like the southeast US, Brazil, Africa, and these plants could produce water right out of the atmosphere. What an amazing idea. In industrialized cities,urine conversion plants would be optimal because of all the continous waste. We could keep our current waste facilities and instead of dumping the filtered water into the ecosystem for nature to make drinkable, just pour it straight into the cleaner and back into the water supply. It could very likely be an almost closed-loop system, and those are the very best types of systems you can create. It wouldn’t be perfectly closed-loop due to evaporation into the atmosphere, but plants in some areas of the world could even recapture that. For rural homes, a “small” system that replaces septic tanks would be great. remove all the liquid from the waste through evaporation, and then separate the gases. there are so many wonderful possbilities from this invention. What will be the biggest thing that slows down the conversion? The ewww, factor…and I thinky ou know what I mean.
3. sherry | 11.26.08
I think I will pass on the recycled urine…omgosh, Id rather die of thirst! And that picture…oh my goodness…it is perfect for the yuck factor in this story, great choice!
4. Jean Keller | 11.26.08
I think saving urine is a wonderful idea. There are endless possibilities!
6. Grant | 11.27.08
Certain bacterial organisms exist that are smaller than any virus and small enough to pass through any filter (L-form bacteria and “nano” bacteria). What is the chance these organisms will be ingested? There’s got to be a better solution. I’ll pass on the urine cocktail, thanks.
7. ColourfulWorld | 11.27.08
The technology is there right now. In fact, all human waste be it liquid or solid can be recycled successfully. Depending on the level of purity, a combination of microfiltration, reverse osmosis, ,carbon absorption, UV treatment etc. is needed but in the end it boils down to one single question: Is this a private service or a public service for it would be expensive to be operated by corporations.
8. Don | 11.27.08
Lets see, maybe we should put our energy into massive campaigns to change people’s habit of procreating. If we could voluntarily reduce the world’s population by about half (without the use of war, famine, or desease) by promoting every for of birth control, then none of the world will have to drink pee. The problem is TOO MANY PEOPLE - not too little water.
9. Christian Hansson | 11.27.08
Brace yourself folks… Waste water - sewage - is already recycled for use in many cities, including in the United States. In the US this water is mostly used for watering plants, industry, flushing toilets and so on. However, in some parts of the world recycled water goes directly to drinking water. Cities in the United States also come very close with treated sewage deliberately discharged into bodies of water that that are sources of potable water. From EPA website: “since 1978, the upper Occoquan Sewage Authority has been discharging recycled water into a stream above Occoquan Reservoir, a potable water supply source for Fairfax County, Virginia.”
Source: http://www.epa.gov/region09/water/recycling/index.html
10. Gary | 11.28.08
Unless one has a urinary tract infection, urine is sterile, as is the airborne water being removed and recycled. I saw no mention of solid waste being reclaimed for the moisture, apparently the eww factor was so high it took control of a lot of imaginations, and added unwarranted materials into the article. Wonder if solar radiation, or extremely sub zero outside temperatures might be able to be used for pre processing sterilization?
11. WebbieGurl | 11.29.08
I dont think there is a need as long as humans take good care of the future. The problem is, human beings are generally thinking of the present only and never taking anything about the future, plus we as human beings are generally wasteful.
12. commy | 11.29.08
You recycle your household waste. You buy locally grown food, fit low-energy light bulbs and try not to use the car unnecessarily. Maybe you even irrigate the garden with your bath water. But you’ve still got an environmental monster in your house. Your toilet is wrecking the planet.
13. gautam jayasurya | 11.29.08
folks….
Rather than opting for expensive machinery, i myself from a developing country would opt for an ecological urine distillation programme, just like what Mr.Scott said. planting trees which need urea in large quantity in dry areas and using these urine as a manure and water source.
advantages:
1. sufficient increase in water table
2. increase in quality of soil; if we can provide adequate amount of acid content also.
3. greenery that is fresh air
4. Better waste management
Any comments??????????
14. Chad | 11.29.08
Well that explains so much about Fairfax County, VA! Seriously though this idea sounds great but wait till the machines break down once. It’s not like a computer or car where if it breaks down you can’t do your job, it’s your source of water. Plus, how will you feel when the city issues an alert telling you not to drink the water because some filtration steps were broken and you just realized that you brushed your teeth in your neighbor’s urine. I’m not against the idea, I just hope there are fail safes in the system for such things. I for one don’t really trust our government to oversee such an operation, we can’t even sell pet food with out poison in it. I realize this sounds ignorant but it’s our water source here!
15. rrgg | 11.29.08
Frankly the heart of the problem is overpopulation is regions that do not have the arable land and water needed to support its people. It’s no surprise that cultures with these problems promote having loads of kids regardless of the ability to support themselves.
17. J. Acai | 11.29.08
Judging by what I see alongside the road, truck drivers are already pioneering urine recycling. I guess they can’t find the recycling stations, though.
19. ben | 11.29.08
with tang wouldn’t be so bad.
I wonder what the ration pee to h20 is.
Good survival tool.
20. Joe | 11.29.08
There is no reason to be concerned about urine recycling as long as the water meets high safety and taste standards before it can be co-mingled with the fresh water supply. The system has to be designed so that improperly treated water can never be consumed. This is a higher standard than many waste treatment facilities that frequently spill raw sewage into streams and bays.
21. DZ Sokol | 11.30.08
We already recycle urine on planet earth… have you never heard of water treatment facilities?
They turn your pee pee and *** *** into drinking water… they’ve been doing it for over 100 years
22. Patricia Shannon | 12.01.08
The earth already does this with our finite supply of water. All the water we use has been thru countless other organisms.
23. Mike McFadden | 12.02.08
To suggest that urine recycling should not be an option because of potential plant failures is a bit naive. We all ready go through water shortages and plant failures that cause towns and cities to stop drinking the local water and urine is not the cause. The overpopulation of the planet and its subsequent problems is something that needs to be addressed and the squeamishness or disgust that people feel is merely a thoughtless reaction to a viable solution. Do not fear technological advancement but embrace it.
24. Erik | 12.22.08
Certain bacterial organisms exist that are smaller than any virus and small enough to pass through any filter (L-form bacteria and “nano” bacteria). What is the chance these organisms will be ingested? There’s got to be a better solution. I’ll pass on the urine cocktail, thanks…
25. Steaven | 12.22.08
with tang wouldn’t be so bad.
I wonder what the ration pee to h20 is.
Good survival tool..
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1. ohohBoB | 11.26.08
When system failure occurs (and it will) how many will die. Rather than do the right thing (conserve now) and repair systems our government goes to corporations for solutions. Make a buck at the expense of the stupid Americans. This is good. Lets get rid of all the stupid people in this country.
Do not irradiate our food. It will last way to long on the shelf.
Do not conserve and protect our water. Support American corporations.
Do not demand a national health care system. America the last developed nation without quality government health care (it our money)send it overseas.