pee shit bricks...

Waste not want not? Well, Ginger Krieg Dosier, an assistant architecture professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, is making what some call waste into building materials. What if we could grow and cultivate architectural materials by employing natural minerals and microorganisms?

The built environment that we all know and sometime love consists as is a limited palette of traditional, static materials such as concrete, glass, steel, and wood. These materials embody high concentrations of energy, with most components of concrete and steel mined from non- renewable resources. Not that great for the sustaining the environment or leaving a minimal carbon foot print. (Though LEED and other associations will give you brownie points otherwise....) Did you know 40% of global carbon dioxide is linked to the construction industry, primarily due to material production and disposal? So why not "grow" bricks? Biologically grown materials can be pollution free (note can be- they might just have a lower production of waste until we figure out how to recycle it). These grown materials also have the potential to contain a low embodied energy and could be produced as part of a local ecosystem.

Dosier has been working on a new breed of biologically “grown” bricks that are durable, sustainably manufactured, and easily produced from readily available materials. These “Better Bricks,” can be “grown” from sand, common bacteria, calcium chloride, and urea. (There's the pee again!) Growing bricks instead of being baking them, which consumes a ton of energy, saves and produces a great amount of energy!

Something to think about. I know it has been a while- but I have just been occupied with settling down in my new home/city/etc. Inhabitable Organism is on the rise! And I have a feeling it will be a pissing good time....

pee power again!!?!

I've done a few posts about Urine at this time but here's something new!

Youtricity, a research group of the Engineering & Physical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, is developing the world's first Direct Urea Powered Fuel Cells. They are focusing their efforts to water treatment/purification and renewable energy where urea is a contamination problem.

This revolutionary new fuel cell takes in urine and out comes electricity and clean water. Brilliant! This would mean wonders for third world energy and clean water problems.

How does this magic work? The fuel cells convert chemical energy into electricity through a series of reactions between a fuel and an oxidant. Urea is a great (and redily) replacement hydrogen or methanol fuels. The only catch is that the batteries don't store any chemical energy inside them. This means they can only operate when external fuel sources are supplied. So keep drinking that aqua.

This yellow wonder is the brainchild of Doctors Shanwen Tao and Rong Lan. It uses cheaper materials for its membrane and catalysts. It uses a non-toxic, non-combustible fuel: urine. Talk about reducing your carbon foot print. Did you also know that urea is also known as carbamide? Urea is not strait urine and comes from humans and mammals. These batteries work with both.

Dr. Tao explained his inspirations::::

"Growing up in rural eastern China I was aware of the use of urea as an agricultural fertilizer. When I became a chemist and was looking at fuel cell development I thought of using it in the process. We are only at prototype stage at present, but if this renewable material can be used as a commercially viable and environmentally friendly energy source then we will be absolutely delighted, and many people around the world will benefit."

Urea elsewhere- it is being used in trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles to reduce nitrous oxide emissions. Other interesting urea items are Urea-formaldehyde, aka pee plastic! This is a non-transparent thermosetting resin or plastic. These resins are closer to you than you think. They are used in adhesives, finishes, MDF, and molded objects. It also has a high tensile strength and used to glue wood together! Ah, the resources we piss away everyday!

PEE POWER!

I have written before about the urine powered batteries in Japan. In a recent article on TreeHugger, they talked about pee as fertilizer. We are clearly wasting our waste. They bring up the points of how our pee regardless of our sewage system does find its contents in our drinking water eventually. Things such as antibiotics, birth control, and viagra are tainting our own organic systems. Gothenburg researcher Zsofia Ganrot has come up with an awesome new method of powdering pee which also removes traces of pharmaceuticals. She has figured out how to recover nutrients by freezing–thawing human urine in combination with struvite precipitation and nitrogen adsorption on zeolite. Shes pretty amazing. Zsofia did her PHD on ”Urine processing for efficient nutrient recovery and reuse in agriculture”. The Treehugger article continues to point out how much we PEE a year. Quite a good bit! Each one of us contributes about 7-9 liters of urine a week to sanitary systems for all those pissing in porcelain. According to Ganrot, in Sweden alone the collection of this resource could offset 1/5th the country's fertilizer use and reduce pollution from the transport of liquid fertilizer. Brilliant! It's recycling the noise into the system!

Pee is a valuable resource which we just throw out everyday. Urine therapy has been around since the Romans and then before. In 1978, the former Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai, a longtime practitioner of urine therapy spoke to Dan Rather on 60 Minutes about urine therapy. Desai stated that urine therapy was the perfect medical solution for the millions of Indians who cannot afford medical treatment. How could we actually process the urine and make it into something that could sustain us?

Or for a bigger stretch, what if we could pay for things with pee one day? It would be more of a barter system, but if we can sell our eggs and organs, why not our potential energies? I mean the dollar isn't worth the paper its printed on most days now so .. how bout something that's more "physical"? ENERGY IS THE ANSWER.