I moved into Mars Base Zero on September 17th, 2004. When I moved
in I didn't have any way set up to handle human waste, so it was my
first major project.
Urine was to be sterilized on the stove (yuk). My first attempt
was to put the urine in a plastic cup and then boil that in a
pot. I covered the cup with a piece of tin foil.
Meltdown! The top of the cup melted and warped right down to the
water line. My second attempt I filled the pot so the cup was
nearly underwater, and didn't cover it. This time the cup shrank,
accordion style, until it was only 2" tall. Of course it spilled
all the urine into the pot (don't think I want to use that pot for
cooking any more!). So I graduated to using glass. In a
usual day I only have to 'cook' my urine once. For those with a
morbid curiosity the proceedure is:
1. Fill 3 glasses with urine.
2. Put the glasses in the pot.
3. Fill the pot with water.
4. Heat on high until it starts to boil.
5. Turn down the heat and simmer for one hour.
The purpose of this is, of course, to sterilize it. After it is
sterilized I dilute it 10:1 with water (pure urine will 'burn' plants
from too much nitrogen) and then pick a place to water with it. I
don't water root crops with it, though I may pour it down into the sand
that lines each tray below the root crops, so their longer roots can
get the nutrients without getting urine on the crop. I also pour
it around non-root crops (being careful to keep it away from the
folage, of course!)
My fece sterilizing proceedure isn't quite acceptable because of the
smell. I sterilize it in a croc pot which was left behind by one
of my old tenants (I own apartment buildings), I have a cut down 2
liter jug until it would fit. Into the bottom of the jug I put
some soil, do my thing into the jug and then put more soil on
top. The soil on the bottom is to make it come out easier; the
soil on top is to try to hold the odur down. This goes into the
croc pot, which is set on simmer. I leave it in four hours, which
should be more than enough to totally sterilize it. Unfortunately
by the second hour it is starting to get kind of smelly; when I was
first doing it I had it in the apartment area, and so I moved it to the
work table at the far end of the greenhouse. I can still smell it
though--I think we are going to have to figure out a better
solution. After sterilizing I put it in a special compost pile
and cover it with dirt, which is odorless (if I didn't need to
sterilize it to put back one the garden [after thoroughly composting,
of course] I would just compost it like this, and have no odor.
Indeed, this is what I did during the 2002 closure--but that closure
was only a week and I figured the loss of nutrients wouldn't be much of
an impact on the ecosystem. But now we need to keep the nutrients
in th ecosystem, so...
There are other options to dealing with this problem. Some kind
of water purification system that uses plants to purify waste products
are in use several places in the country...unfortunately this takes a
great deal of space, and space is at a premium here. So
sterilization and composting seem to be the best bet.
Copyright
©
2004