Scientists try to "change dung into treasure": transform human feces into energy sources to relieve natural pressure

【Source: Nine Pai News】

Imagine that you sit in a brick room to eat with ceramic plates and drink water with plastic cups. This seems to be an ordinary scene, but your plates, cups, and your house are made from recycled feces. Imagine that your feces will promote spacecraft to and from space and protect astronauts from cosmic radiation on the way.

These scenarios are in the book "Healthy: Incredible Treasure Science", which is about to publish "Pare: Incredible Treasure Science" by American microbiologists and science reporters. In the book, he describes feces, a giant by -products, which are despised in daily life, are natural resources that are seriously underestimated.

Blingniersen said feces have powerful functions. It can be used as medicines, fertilizers, bioline gas and regeneration water, but this is just the fur of our excrement potential. Its biochemical, chemical and physical attributes will stimulate a wider and forward -looking brainstorm, that is, what we can create from "waste".

Sali: Invisible assets of space exploration

The limitation of space has promoted the economic model of scientific innovation towards a more circular, that is, nothing can be wasted. In the challenge of NASA with the theme of feces, the most recent competition is to seek a new design for the toilet of the moon, and the other is the challenge of the waste into the basic material: the sustainable re -processing of the space, the public is required to benefit the public, and it will be beneficial to the public. The garbage and body waste of the two astronauts "become waste into treasure."

NASA also proposed a proposal called "Water Wall Building", which imagined a space capsule containing multiple water compartments and disinfection waste for radiation shielding. The main components of urine and feces are water. The hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms tightly accumulated in water will provide a cosmic ray blocking wall with higher density than metal.

Peter Gada, a biologist at the National Space Radiation Laboratory of NASA, and a scientist at the Brookhai National Laboratory of New York, said that the water -based protective cover can prevent the radiation particles well. In space, the goods of each ounce -including heavy but necessary water are precious. "If you have them, can you do something with them?" He said. "It should be effective in theory," he said.

Make "feces bricks"

In all parts of the world, the processed sewage solids are usually incinerated or buried, but incineration waste will produce ashes. Researchers are actively studying how to transform solid waste and ashes into useful products.

The engineers of the Royal Institute of Technology in Australia are focusing on alleviating the environmental problems of mitigating brick production and digging clay, and consider exploring how to add the processed sewage solid or biological solids into the firing bricks. It seems unusual to make "feces bricks" like this, but in fact for centuries, animal feces have been used to build houses and production pottery.

The institute's civil engineer Abbas Mohajrani and his colleagues in a paper published in 2019 stated that although it was fired for 10 hours at a temperature of nearly 2000, this kind of "feces that contains biosarios processed by Melbourne residents Brick "is not as strong as traditional bricks, but they are lighter and better insulator, and they are not different from the traditional brick in appearance and odor.

The Dramelda Museum will recycled cow dung piles

Another group of researchers in the Melbourne Institute also showed that primitive biological waste, carbon (charcoal made of biological solids) and incinerated sewage mud can be used as cement substitution materials. Researchers in the UK suggested that sewage mud ash can also be reused in tiles and glass ceramics, with the potential for widespread application in the construction industry.

In fact, the Museo Della Merda Museum in Italy has been mixed with cow dung and clay to make red earth bricks, flower pots and tableware.

Of course, for the finished stools such as biological plastic cups and ceramic dishes, the disgusting factor of the feces itself is a great obstacle. However, the multiple challenges faced by the harsh space environment and mining resources are promoting researchers to imagine a more economical cycle model. These biological waste can "turn waste into treasure" to help exploration and be used as a sanitary infrastructure. After all, this special natural resources Will never be exhausted.

Jiupai News Intern reporter Cen Yuxin

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