7 ms·
The Peecyclers
- rossdavidh 4y agoOk, at the very least I give them points for the tag headline.
- Guthur 4y ago
- woodruffw 4y agoThis reads like a screed. Could you say precisely what you mean by the "green agenda"? I've never heard the petrochemical industry (which is what we're talking about, when we're talking about artificial fertilizer) called that before. Also, Africa is a large continent. Significantly larger than North America. It stands to reason that there will always be parts that are easier and parts that are harder to perform commercial agriculture on.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoIt really seems like you’re choosing to not understand the GP. The green agenda is just a blunt way of referring to all of the messaging and policy initiatives related to climate or environmental protection - as I understood it. I don’t know why you think the petrochemical industry is synonymous with the green agenda. Does that not sound suspiciously incorrect to you?
- woodruffw 4y ago> The green agenda is just a blunt way of referring to all of the messaging and policy initiatives related to climate or environmental protection - as I understood it. This wasn't clear on my first read -- it sounded like they were claiming that the two are the same, which does indeed sound suspiciously incorrect (and is why I asked.)
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoAh, well I apologize for the harsh wording. Glad we’re on the same page.
- pvg 4y agoThis reads like a screed That's why there's a 'do not feed' sign on the screed cage.
- aaron695 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dang 4y agoIt looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Could you please not? We ban accounts that do that, regardless of their ideology, because it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. More explanation on the "primarily for ideological battle" point can be found in past comments here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- ed25519FUUU 4y agoI have something called a Venturi siphon that allows me to easily feed urine into the irrigation for my home garden. It definitely makes a difference. I do worry about a build up of salt over time since I live in a low precipitation climate (12”/year). The article doesn’t seem to touch on that concern.
- bragr 4y agoYou can get your soil tested it you are concerned (or just curious). My county health department lab quotes about $200 for a small garden but YMMV
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- neonate 4y agohttps://archive.ph/7g3IK https://archive.ph/7g3IK
- chewz 4y agoI am doing this for like 2 years now in my home garden... Mixing urine with water like 1:2 and using in a garden or compost... [Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30272019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30272019)
- incanus77 4y agoNot speaking for them, but I do contract work on the Pi/Arduino systems for the pasteurization process. It's all pretty straightforward technically, but I thought HN readers might be interested to know that it's making use of open source software under the hood (and might be open source at some point).
- schiffern 4y agoRepost from another thread [0] > To pasteurize the pee, it stays in the jug for at least two months before the farmer applies it A 2 month "buffer" (beyond that needed due to crop seasonality) needs to hold a lot of pee. This processing time can be reduced to 10 hours by adding watermelon seeds[1], which contain the enzyme urease. If only the Romans had known this! They stored large amounts of urine (converting to ammonia) for washing clothes. For this reason, Roman laundries were legally forbidden from being located within city limits. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31800128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31800128 [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291165299_Citrullus_lanatus_seeds_as_a_urine_catalyst_for_anthroponics_use https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291165299_Citrullus...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pvg 4y agohttps://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=author%3Adang%20copy-paste%20comments&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- schiffern 4y agoThanks for correcting me. To add insult to injury, I even checked first to see if there was a rule about that! This really should be added to the Guidelines. It might avert some future embarrassment for others. I want to follow the rules. This was a discoverability failure (as your need to link to a third-party search tool as the "source" should demonstrate). Thanks again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- photochemsyn 4y agoThis practice has some interesting historical antecedents. The main species of nitrogen in mammal urine is urea (H2N-C-NH2), but the ideal form of nitrogen for fertilizer is probably nitrate (NO3-) in most cases (and it's easier to store and transport as a solid). Soil bacteria in healthy soils around roots will also transform urea to ammonia and nitrate in fairly complicated processes, and there are pH effects. For an overview: https://www.cannagardening.com/how_ammonium_nitrate_ratio_affects_your_plants https://www.cannagardening.com/how_ammonium_nitrate_ratio_af... However, nitrate has many other practical uses, and in industrial Europe before the invention of Haber-Bosch, a major use was gunpowder manufacture (the ingredient saltpeter, potassium nitrate KNO3). An entire industry existed, based on taking animal and human urine (and other materials, like rotting animal carcasses) and processing it in a certain manner to encourage its conversion to nitrate crystals, typically involving beds of wood chips which would become covered with a frost of potassium nitrate crystals. The British government passed laws about the storage of urine for the king's 'petermen' to come and collect for this purpose. Here's a technical manual from 1862 on the process, from start to pure potassium nitrate (which in turn, could be converted to the important industrial chemical, nitric acid): https://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/lecontesalt/leconte.html https://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/lecontesalt/leconte.html Whether or not this widespread practice had anything to do with the origin of the British phrase 'taking the piss' is a mystery to me.
- DonHopkins 4y agoYou look like the piss boy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OWMB3ewpNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OWMB3ewpNM
- invalidname 4y agoCount the money... "De Monet", "Deee Monet"!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gadders 4y agoIt was also used in ancient Rome (and even further back) to clean clothes and process fabrics: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/46/the-fullers-of-ancient-rome/ https://www.worldhistory.org/article/46/the-fullers-of-ancie...
- quickthrower2 4y agoSurely an easy win would be the men's urinals. Collect all the pee, and just divert water away via a valve when the cleaning cycle is running. Maybe there is enough money in it for a company to install a system like that for free in restaurants, airports, public buildings etc.
- pstuart 4y agoExactly. Pissoirs with a bit more personal space.
- chris_wot 4y agoDoesn’t human urine have high quantities of salt?
- chicob 4y agoAround 3,5 g of sodium per liter.
- salgernon 4y agoSee Also, "The Truth"[1] by Terry Pratchett pp144 "'Yeah, King of the Golden River,' said the dwarf." Pratchett's character employs people to collect the "night water" - they get paid for collection, and the recycler gets paid after processing. "Terry adds: "And let me say right now that practically everything in the career of Harry King is fairly based on fact (except for the trolls)." [1] https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/the-truth.html https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/the-truth.html
- benj111 4y agoWhat happens to these nutrients at a sewage treatment plant? I know that farmers collect the sludge for I assume fertilizer. If that stage could be modified to keep the nutrients that seems like the best thing going forward.
- schiffern 4y agoSewage solids applied to farms are a major source of microplastic contamination,[0] likely since we currently commingle our valuable human waste with wastewater from washing machines. Synthetic textiles cause 35% of ocean microplastics[1] (ie the largest single source), so this is not a small waste stream. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31520673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31520673 [1] https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/2017-002-En.pdf https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documen...
- mbroshi 4y agoSounds like an interesting--although presumably not easily and quickly scalable--solution to fertilizer shortages. I am dubious about the environmental improvement. According to a meta-analysis[0], chemical fertilizers produce less ammonia emissions > However, ammonia emissions, nitrogen leaching and nitrous oxide emissions per product unit were higher from organic systems. Basically, chemical fertilizers are much more efficient and have more uniform distribution of nutrients. [0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479712004264 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030147971...
- chicob 4y agoFertilizers can be more than urea, like ammonium nitrate. Urea is also used, although many times it is treated for controlled release. Apart from that, some math is in order. Let's say I need 200 kg/ha of a 12-6-6 NPK fertilizer for post-sowing 10 ha of some crop, like corn. (This is a little short of 180 lb/ac for a total of ~25 acres. I'm in Europe, and I don't know what would be a typical value for the US). This fertilizer has 12% w/w of total nitrogen, so for the total area my needs are 240 kg of nitrogen (~530 lb). An adult will produce an average of 1,4 L (0.37 gal) of urine daily, with a nitrogen content of 8,83 g/L, so this means a total of 12,36 g/day, or 4,5 kg/year (~10 lb/year).[1] So I'll need the urine that 53 people pee for a whole year for this single crop. A six tower pivot has something around 4 or 5 times that area. And this area can be used twice a year for different crops. The average US farm has 445 ac.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine#Characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine#Characteristics [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/196106/average-size-of-farms-in-the-us-since-2000/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/196106/average-size-of-f...
- noodlesUK 4y agoI’m curious though, how many people would that 10ha of corn feed? My understanding is that it would be a lot of corn…
- chicob 4y agoThe average yield for corn in the US for 2021 was 176.5 bu/ac. This is around 11,9 ton/ha. For 10 ha, a total of 119 ton.[1][2] How many people this would feed is hard to tell, because it depends on the kind of corn. Some corn is meant for human consumption, some other for livestock feed (which in turn is meant for human consumption. But as a rough estimate one can add these two to find an order of magnitude. In 2008, the USDA broke down the usage for maize, with 133,4 Mton (5250 Mbs) for livestock and 8,3 Mton (327 Mbs) for human consumption. That year, the US population was around 303.5 million people, so that gives an average of 467 kg (1030 lb) a person each year.[3][4] So those 10 ha would produce enough corn for 240 people for a whole year.[5] [1] Assuming around 15% moisture content. [2] https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2021/08/13/us-average-corn-yield-176-5-bpa-51-5 https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2021/... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize#Human_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize#Human_food [4] https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2008/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2... [5] I ended up doing the calculation in imperial units, to minimize rounding errors.
- gadders 4y agoNever thought to use it for fertiliser, but urinating onto a compost heap to speed up the process of creation is pretty common. At least two of the presenters on BBC Radio 4's Gardener's Question Time do it - Bob Flowerdew and Christine Walkden.
- medion 4y agoOne of my greatest memories of science class as a kid, was making saltpeter from scratch with a particularly creative teacher. First, we built a latrine and the class pee’d on straw and lime for a couple of months. Then, we boiled the straw in copper pots, poured the liquid into jars, and suspended cotton string in the jars. As the liquid evaporated, saltpeter grew as crystals on the string.
- tomcam 4y agoSpent a good bit of my childhood using an outhouse. Now that I have a farm I think I’ll just… buy my fertilizer, thanks