Toilets on the Moon

[john_316]

And now Dr Morris how much would that cost to build?<br /><br /><br />LOL<br /><br /><br /><img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />

 

[dreada5]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>The shuttle is roomy compared to a lunar lander. It has enough space for a toliet on the mid-deck. I believe it is seperated from the rest of the mid-deck by a curtain. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Yeah, well maybe Soyuz and Anousheh Ansari is a better example.

 

[halman]

As I understand it, the heat content of methane gas is pretty low. And, we must remember that the methane is a byproduct of bacterial action, which probably is not desirable in the greater scheme of recycling wastes. Possibly the easiest way to remove water from feces is to freeze dry them by exposing them to vacuum.<br /><br /><br />As far as launching mass from the Moon, the electromagnetic catapult will probably be the best choice, as collecting energy is easy on the Moon. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[bpfeifer]

Fecal methane + regolith oxygen = fuel cells<br /><br />I'm suddenly feeeling warm and fuzzy all over. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Brian J. Pfeifer http://sabletower.wordpress.com<br /> The Dogsoldier Codex http://www.lulu.com/sabletower<br /> </div>

 

[bpfeifer]

"Is that what farmers do with manure? I figured they used it straight."<br /><br />I'm no farmer, but I spent time on an 18th century farm museum eight or nine years ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy. We piled the manure and bedding straw from the animal stalls in a corner of the yard and left it there for the indigenous bacteria to work on it for a long time. I don't recall if it was 6 months or a year. Then the pile was dug up an mixed onto the fields before planting.<br /><br />In a closed loop system, you can't just pile up the poop for a year. You don't want the bacteria sharing your living space. That's why you restrict them to your digester, and sterilize fertilizer that comes out.<br /><br />Hope that clarifies my earlier statements. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Brian J. Pfeifer http://sabletower.wordpress.com<br /> The Dogsoldier Codex http://www.lulu.com/sabletower<br /> </div>

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"...how much would that cost to build?"</font><br /><br />Well -- right at the top of the article, the capital cost for the system described is $10,000. Mind you -- no design currently in use will be suitable for use as-is. For one thing -- they'll all be *much* too large, being designed to handle the poop of a herd of some grazing critter rather than a half-dozen astronauts. Also you'd want some redesigns to make the best use of lunar resources (like using sunlight to heat the water in the boiler instead of methane). Optimally, I'd see the lunar toilet being directly connected to this. It makes no sense pooping one place then having to transport the results elsewhere. If you put the toilet, digester, and hydroponics/fecolith experiments all in one place -- the poop never has to travel. It would make some sense to put most or all of the conventional ECLSS here as well.

 

[rocketman5000]

Anybody interested in making a startup company with this? Something small and transportable to space could be coupled to a fuel cell or something and you could have a miniture power station (thinking for limited use such as emergency communication or drinking water sanitization) for remote places such as Subsaharian Africa or northern Siberia. Wouldn't have to rely solely on space travel for revenue. Might even make it cost effective....

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"...remote places such as Subsaharian Africa or northern Siberia."</font><br /><br />This would also have potential in South America & China. I have no interest in such a startup, but yes, I can envision the sketch outline of a village Metho-Pot-E that would fit the use you're referring to. Said sketch looks something like:<br /><br />-- Four to six 'Porta-Pottie' cubicles in a line along the front of the Methane-digester pictured above.<br />-- A solar pump like a Dankoff Slowpump to lift water from a shallow well to a tank on the roof of the MPE. Since we want hot water -- probably best if this 'tank' is actually an integral-collector solar system.<br />-- Excess power from the solar panel that runs the solar pump would charge a small battery bank. The system doesn't really require much in the way of electricity -- but it'd be nice to have access to small amounts of power for controls (i.e. the thermostat on the digester) and so forth.<br /><br />Mind you -- there are problems. Your customer base is piss poor... or possibly rich in *that* aspect... but poor otherwise. Also -- while I'm not worried about a controlled environment like the station where they *will* have the ability and discipline to sterilize the liquid fertilizer before use, that is less assured where these would be used. Fertlizer made from human excrement is much more likely to spread disease than animal dung simply because humans and livestock aren't (for the most part) affected by the same diseases. Of course China has used human waste in their fields for a few thousand years... so it's obviously not a showstopper.

 

[spacester]

<font color="yellow">Fertlizer made from human excrement is much more likely to spread disease than animal dung simply because humans and livestock aren't (for the most part) affected by the same diseases</font><br /><br />That's central to my question. I am weak in biology compared to other sciences so I'm not clear on how severe the difference is.<br /><br />Certainly, I've always been under the impression that human feces are much nastier than anything that could be called manure. We are omnivores and have quite the sophisticated fauna in our gut. I always thought that removing disease vectors starts with isolating ourselves from our feces. Almost a founding tenet of civilization even.<br /><br />So if we've got all these other things to worry about on the moon, why risk establishing a feedback loop which results in, I don't know, a chloroform epidemic or hepatitis X or something someday? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[kane007]

"Is that what farmers do with manure? I figured they used it straight." <br /><br />I believe most farmers just wash the manure away, down the nearest stream!

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"So if we've got all these other things to worry about on the moon..."</font><br /><br />Well you'll notice that I was on <b>one</b> side of this argument when you brought it up in conjunction with a lunar base, but in the <b>other</b> side when it's put in the context of usage on earth in 3rd-world conditions.<br /><br />There are several reasons for this:<br /><br />1: The people who would be dealing with the processed sludge on the moon will be (with *no* exceptions) professionals with a firm understanding of the germ theory of disease. They will *know* (for example) the importance of washing their hands after dealing with the contents no matter how *certain* it is that it's been sterilized.<br /><br />2. The *in* vector of disease will be much more controlled. Human feces cannot spread cholera if none of the persons doing the squatting has this disease (I'm assuming here that in your post, 'chloroform' is an inventive alternate spelling of 'cholera'. ) <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />3. The *out* vectors are likewise much lower. The most common means of cholera spreading via human feces, is insects visiting infected feces than making a brief stop by somebody's lunch.<br /><br />4. All three of the above assume that the sludge cannot be properly sterilized. Once processed, the sludge can be pumped to a chamber that will receive direct sunlight and sealed such that it will act as a pressure-cooker -- reaching temperatures in excess of 100C without boiling, then left like that for hours or days. There simply is no such thing as a communicable biota dangerous to humans that can exist at this level of heat for extended periods of time. If you're going to theorize that the conditions of space/radiation/etc. will *mutate* an existing bug into just such a dangerous extremophile, then that assumption works equally well with Sergi's flu virus that he brought to the lunar base. One sneeze and they're all goners -- no fecal ma

 

[spacester]

Yeah I meant cholera. Oops, chloroform epidemic, hehehe. And I did notice the distinction depending on application.<br /><br />I think you've summed it up nicely. The bottom line from a design standpoint is to not skimp on the sterilization step. My out-of-the-box idea here will go back on the shelf I suppose.<br /><br />Still, I'm not convinced that digester equipment running on primarily human feces, and not the more usual animal manure, is the way to go. <br /><br />If there's a greenhouse operation, there will be an organic recycling stream, but surely that would be a different digester? You can't have the poop bacteria in the digester and use the resulting effluent and scum in hydroponics, right? So there would be a separate poop digester?<br /><br />So maybe the feces should be directly captured and immediately routed to the sterilization process, skip the digester, maybe use pyrolysis as indicated earlier, and thence to the fecolith. (Did you make that word up?) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

I wasn't going to inteject this, but finally couldn't resist. Wouldn't it be called a poower plant?<br /><img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[willpittenger]

I was talking about farmers using it to fertilize their crops. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[willpittenger]

Actually, it's worse. Soyuz has two completely seperate compartments. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"So there would be a separate poop digester?"</font><br /><br />I'm not clear why you think there would be, so I'm not sure how to answer. This page of the same document I linked to before actually goes into more depth about the 'raw materials'. Included in there is actually information about the amounts of RM created by a 150-pound human daily. However, he gives figures assuming that you collect the manure of your animals or manure 'plus bedding', which would be plant material similar to what I *think* you're talking about needing a second converter for (i.e. waste plant stems/etc. from a hydroponics farm).<br /><br /><font color="yellow">"...fecolith. (Did you make that word up?)"</font><br /><br />Well... I *thought* I did. Based on a Google search, I'm the first to use it in this particular context. However, the term does exist, and it does mean the same basic thing that I was referring to, where feces means a word that the profanity parser would obfuscate and lith means 'rock'.

 

[spacester]

If the lunar hab has basically no agriculture going on, then the waste stream will be dominated by human wastes and packaging. So a digester system could be used, but the effluent and scum would have no use. If you had just enough plants to utilize that resource, it would still need to be sterilized before it could go on food crops. There would be a single system but it would not be the same as the schematic you provided. The purpose would be to deal with the poop and make methane at the same time.<br /><br />If the lunar hab does have agriculture going on, then there will be a "compost heap" in some form, and one good possibility is the digester system. The purposes would be to recycle plant material and build up organic matter for soil amendment, among other things, such as methane production.<br /><br />But if human poop goes in that digester, there is no sterilization step before the effluent and scum are introduced into the "biosphere". <br /><br />So if the human feces is to be "digested", that would require a separate "black water" unit, right? <br /><br />In any case, I cannot see human feces going in the "raw material" inlet with the effluent going on the lettuce crop. We don't make manure, we make essaitcheyetee. They don't call it that fer nuthin'. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"In any case, I cannot see human feces going in the "raw material" inlet with the effluent going on the lettuce crop. We don't make manure, we make essaitcheyetee. They don't call it that fer nuthin'."</font><br /><br />Ah -- a rose by any other name...<br /><br />'Manure' isn't a noun describing what something *is*, but a noun describing what *purpose* excrement is being used for. Let's say Elsie drops a pile of processed grass out in the field. If the digested vegetable matter is <b>left</b> in the field, we call it a 'cowflop' (among other things). If we have Johnny collect it and drop it in Ma's vegetable garden, we call it 'manure'. There is no chemical difference between the cowflop and the manure -- only the use. Human waste used to feed crops would be called manure. Human digestive tracts and Elsie's perform similar functions and produce similar results.<br /><br /><font color="yellow">"But if human poop goes in that digester, there is no sterilization step before the effluent and scum are introduced into the "biosphere". "</font><br /><br />Sure there is -- I've already discussed it above. After the effluent/scum is kicked out of the digester, they are placed in a holding tank that is subjected to high temps (powered by lunar sunlight) to sterilize.<br /><br /><font color="yellow">"...that would require a separate "black water" unit, right?"</font><br /><br />Not in my design, no. I see plant waste and human waste in the same digester<br /><br /><font color="yellow">"If the lunar hab has basically no agriculture going on, then the waste stream will be dominated by human wastes and packaging. So a digester system could be used, but the effluent and scum would have no use. "</font><br /><br />I've predicated this notion from the very start on my opinion that it's inconceivable that NASA won't experiment with lunar agriculture in a base of the magnitude they're discussing. If we are going to have truly

 

[rocketman5000]

"the only source of organics is what we ship up there *until* plants start growing"<br /><br />Exactly, like it or not human feces will be important to the colonization of the solar system. Without organic mater of similar quality as terrian soil we'll have to heavily modify the DNA of every plant to obtain good crop yeilds. It is far easier I believe to develop processes to reuse human waste for crops than genetic modification. That way every time you bring a shipment of food or organics from off world you'll be increasing the strength or size of the colony's agriculture capabilities.

 

[corbarrad]

Recently on NASA TV I saw a piece on (if I remember correctly) one of the earlier STS missions. <br />There was some kind of "privacy curtain" to preserve the crew members (both male and females) modesty.<br /><br />As to the acgricultural angle, far as i know farmers do not sterilize their... organic fertilizer before taking it to the field. <br />For moon gardenig sterilization by pyrolysis sounds more than sufficient. After all we're dealing with ordinary earthly microorganisms and not some fancy space bugs which thrive in vacuum adn/or high temperature/pressure environments.

 

[scottb50]

As to the acgricultural angle, far as i know farmers do not sterilize their... organic fertilizer before taking it to the field...<br /><br />As shown recently with the spinach and green onion scares.<br /><br />I would think a few days exposure on the surface of the moon or in open Space, would pretty much kill anything, Mars would be a different story though. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[willpittenger]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>I would think a few days exposure on the surface of the moon or in open Space, would pretty much kill anything.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Not quite. Microbes survived for some time on Surveyor 3 before the Apollo 12 crew retrieved its camera. It seems someone sneezed on the camera before launch. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Will Pittenger<hr style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em" />Add this user box to your Wikipedia User Page to show your support for the SDC forums: <div style="margin-left:1em">{{User:Will Pittenger/User Boxes/Space.com Account}}</div> </div>

 

[spacester]

See, I don't think that sterilized effluent and scum are the same thing as that stuff coming out of the digester with all that composting flora and fauna goodness. Maybe I'm wrong on that, but if the digester is at 95 degF and the crops are in a greenhouse at a slightly lower temperature, then it seems to me that the undigested organic matter (the effluent can't be liquid only, can it?) is going to include beneficial beasties for the soil that we ought not kill.<br /><br />If you're growing crops as foodstock - as opposed to experimenting with plants on a small scale - you are looking for a recycling system that recycles nutrients effectively, and it just does not make sense to me to throw the fecal bacteria in there complicating it with an extra sterilizing step while reducing the nutrient value out of the digester.<br /><br />Yes indeed I am a moon colonization advocate, that is my overriding interest in this thread. My vision is rather well developed and also rather out of the box. I try not to proselytize too much here about it. One of the essential premises is that 'my' activities would be in support of and parallel to NASAs activities and as such would be different than NASAs activities.<br /><br />In this case, I assume NASA will be using good old freeze-dried food supply and hi-tech non-biologic toilets. Their plants will be grown in specialized laboratory equipment. They may have radishes and lettuce and wheat grass on their dinner plates, but as a nice to have bonus.<br /><br />Meanwhile, next door, a private and/or international effort might be exploring the applied life sciences - agriculture & animal husbandry - that NASA would otherwise be forced to peg as future activities. And it might have a galley that is set up to do actual cooking operations using Earth-supplied bulk food commodities, not just prepared foods. And it might have the NASA folks over for dinner on a regular basis to see who has the best pizza.<br /><br />Yes, I'm talking about not just gr <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mrmorris]

<font color="yellow">"...it seems to me that the undigested organic matter (the effluent can't be liquid only, can it?) is going to include beneficial beasties for the soil that we ought not kill."</font><br /><br />The 'beasties' that I believe you are half-remembering are the ones that work in compost piles and such to break organic materials into useful elements that can be absorbed by plants when mixed into the soil (i.e. like nitrogen, phosphorus and the like). The disconnect that you're missing is that the sludge digester *performs* the task of breaking down organics to useful elements -- and much faster than happens as a 'natural' process (probably 'unaided' would be a better term since the digester isn't exactly 'unnatural'). The sludge has already been broken down into the components required by plants. From the document I continue to post:<br /><br /><i>"Most solids not converted into methane settle out in the digester as a liquid sludge. Although varying with the raw materials used and the conditions of digestion, this sludge contains many elements essential to plant life: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium plus small amounts of metallic salts (trace elements) indispensible for plant growth such as boron, calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, sulfur, zinc, etc."</i><br /><br />Since the sludge contains the elements already broken out... we don't really need the 'breakdown bacteria' in there anymore, and we can kill them off along with the E-Coli before using it for enriching regolith designated for food-production.<br /><br /><font color="yellow">"I almost forgot a central point here. I assume hydroponics as the technology used to grow food crops (again, as opposed to eating the byproducts of your research), and so the whole idea of Fecolith and soil amendment is not congruent with my vision. The critical point here is that the nutrients will be in highly concen</font>

 

[spacester]

OK I did a little bit of research. I wish I had time to really do my homework on these things. As it is, I'm relying on guys like you to do some of it for me. <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /> But there's a limit to how ignorant I'm willing to be. <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> FWIW I have read that document; it's not like I'm ignoring it. <br /><br />I'll try to make this quick: I'm not willing to put human feces in a 95 degF digester. There will be pathogens in all output streams and thus I have to invest more energy and equipment in sterilizing all of them.<br /><br />However, it appears that a lunar-qualified model derived from systems currently in production from Microgy (also see this story) has a good chance of handling all waste streams and all pathogens. I note that the produced solid waste material is not marketed as any kind of soil amendment, but as animal bedding, which indicates to me that the digestion has removed nearly all nutrients (mmmm, thick rich nutritious sludge). I'm not clear on what use that non-nutritious bedding material would have in my lunar setup but I'm sure we can think of something. <br /><br />It does makes me wonder if I wouldn't rather have less efficient methane production and more effective soil amendment production, i.e. a compost pile with worms and bacteria and fungi instead of a digester. It would seem there is a trade-off here and it is not clear if one can do both well at the same time.<br /><br />Again to be brief, I would say that sludge hydroponics would add an additional level of difficulty in a crop-production environment. I would much rather control my nutrient solutions using measured amounts of pure white powders instead of trying to balance the nutrients available from the sludge with the nutrient <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>