Novel approach based on source separation for conversion of fresh urine to valuable resources in rural villages

Separation of urine and feces from wastewater at the source offers a promising strategy to alleviate resource scarcity; yet, broad implementation of this strategy in rural villages requires advanced technological systems to overcome an obstacle of benefits-burdens imbalance. Here, prior intervention of life cycle assessment (LCA) was attempted for the advance of N and P recovery technologies at proof-of-concept stage. We propose two novel nutrient recovery processes based on fresh urine: Ca 3 (PO 4 ) 2 precipitation by refined addition of Ca(OH) 2 and ion capture electrochemical system (ICES). Impurity interference in Ca–P precipitation process can be controlled through urine acidification and refined Ca(OH) 2 dosing; ICES can achieve a synchronous recovery of N and P from fresh urine. A prospective LCA revealed that the newly-proposed solutions outperform the prevailing struvite precipitation recovery process and achieve better operational eco-effectiveness, directly decreasing 80–98 ​% environmental burdens mainly through relieving substantial one-off chemicals input. Furthermore, a more flexible and customizable process can simplify the recovery procedures and increase the practicability for operations and subsequent applications, further amplifying the utility of the proposed source separation methodologies.