Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene September - October 2016 Vol. 11 No.4 | Page 11

NEWS in brief
“This mandate for clean water and public accountability
means less sewage in basements, streets and waterways
and more progress for the Chesapeake Bay,” Maryland
Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles said in a
press release. “Upgrading the sewers and greening the City
will improve public health and environmental quality, and
that’s good news for all of us.”
The proposed modification establishes a two-phase
approach, with an estimated 83 percent of the city’s
remaining sewer overflow volume to be eliminated by
January 2021 under the first phase, WBALTV reported.
“It is work we must do to secure the long-term future of
our critical infrastructure, and to make sure Baltimore’s
waterways are as clean as we can make them,” Baltimore
Department of Public Works director Rudy Chow said in a
statement.

Global Highlights

nitrogen and phosphorus are separated.
Under the slogan #peeforscience, the team recently
deployed the machine at a 10-day music and theater festival
in central Ghent, recovering 1,000 liters of water from the
urine of revelers. The aim is to install larger versions of
the machine in sports venues or airports but also to take
it to a rural community in the developing world where
fertilizers and reliable drinking water are short in supply,
Derese said.
As was the case with previous projects the research team
was engaged in, the water recovered from the city festival
will be used to make one of Belgium’s most coveted
specialties - beer. “We call it from sewer to brewer,” Derese
said.
Source: Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA)

Belgian scientists create machine to turn urine into
drinkable water

Saudi Arabia Sets Sights On 100% Wastewater
Reuse

The aim is to install larger versions of the machine in
sports venues or airports but also to take it to a rural
communities.
A team of scientists at a Belgian university say they have
created a machine that turns urine into drinkable water and
fertilizer using solar energy, a technique which could be
applied in rural areas and developing countries.

By Sara Jerome
“Over $66 billion in long-term capital investments have
been committed for water and sanitation projects in the
Kingdom in the next 10 years, while the government aims
to achieve 100 percent reuse of wastewater from cities
with 5,000 inhabitants or more by 2025,” the Saudi Gazette
reported.
Overall, “Saudi Arabia aims to reuse over 65 percent
of its water by 2020 and over 90 percent by 2040 by
transforming its existing and planned wastewater treatment
assets into source water suppliers across all sectors. Valued
at over $4.3 billion by Global Water Intelligence, the
Kingdom’s water reuse market is the third largest in the
world,” the report said.
According to a report by the King Abdullah University of
Science and Technology, significant water challenges are
looming over Saudi Arabia’s future.

The inventors near the machine that turns urine into drinkable water and
fertilizer using solar energy, at the University of Ghent, Belgium. (Photo:
Twitter)

While there are other options for treating waste water,
the system applied at the University of Ghent uses a
special membrane, is said to be energy-efficient and to be
applicable in areas off the electricity grid.
“We’re able to recover fertilizer and drinking water from
urine using just a simple process and solar energy,” said
University of Ghent researcher Sebastiaan Derese. The
urine is collected in a big tank, heated in a solar-powered
boiler before passing through the membrane where
the water is recovered and nutrients such as potassium,

Saudi Arabia has set a goal to reuse 100 percent of urban wastewater by
2025.
Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • September - October 2016

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