Waterless Urinals: A Resource Book

This is a Wonderful 39 page  Technical document  on covering  all aspect  of Waterless Urinals and some variants that incorporates
the core ideas.

written by

• Dr V M Chariar
• S Ramesh Sakthivel

from forward

This Resource Book is a guide that seeks to assist individuals, builders, engineers, architects, and policy makers in promoting waterless urinals and the benefits of harvesting urine for reuse through waterless urinals and urine diverting toilets.

Chapters cover a wide set of Waterless Urinals details

1. Waterless Urinals
   1. 1.1  Advantages of Waterless Urinals and Reuse of Urine
   2. 1.2  Demerits of Conventional Urinals
2. Functioning of Waterless Urinals
   1. 2.1  Sealant Liquid Traps
   2. 2.2  Membrane Traps
   3. 2.3  Biological Blocks
   4. 2.4  Comparative Analysis of Popular Odour Traps
   5. 2.5  Other Types of odour Traps
   6. 2.6  Installation and Maintenance of Waterless Urinals
3. Innovative Urinal Designs
   1. 3.1  Public Urinal Kiosk 21
   2. 3.2  Green Waterless Urinal
   3. 3.3  Self Constructed Urinals
4. Urine Diverting Toilets
5. Urine Harvesting for Agriculture
   1. 5.1  Safe Application of Urine 3
   2. 5.2  Methods of Urine Application
6. Other Applications of Urine
7. Challenges and the Way Forward
8. References and Further Reading

The book has a solid collection of tables and diagrams that support the text

• Comparative analysis of popular odour traps
• Average chemical composition of fresh urine
• Recommended dose of urine for various crops
• Waterless urinals for men
• Schematic diagram showing functioning of urinals
• Sealant liquid based odour trap
• Urinals with sealant liquid based odour traps
• Flat rubber tube by Keramag and silicon membranes by Addicom
• LDPE membrane by Shital Ceramics
• Biological blocks
• Formwork used for fabrication of public urinal kiosk
• Reinforced concrete public urinal kiosk
• Drawing of public urinal kiosk established at IIT Delhi
• Green urinal established at IIT Delhi
• Plant bed of green urinal with perforated pipe
• Drawing of public urinal kiosk established at IIT Delhi
• Self constructed urinal Eco‐lily
• Squatting type urine diverting dry toilet with two chambers
• Urine diverting no mix toilet 27 Sectional view of a urine diverting dry toilet
• Deep injection of urine using soil injector
• Deep injection of urine using perforated pet bottles
• Use of fertilisation tank for applying urine through drip irrigation
• Manually operated reactor for recovery of struvite
• Schematic drawing of ammonia stripping from urine

Among many topics the Doc  weighs pros and cons of of traps to prevent odor and gases for escaping .Most of the solutions  have cost / maintenance barriers that limit feasibility to particular set of cases. India is a large county and need a variety of solutions as does the rest of the world.

We will  will  be interested to learn more about Zerodor
“An odourless trap Zerodor which does not require replaceable parts or consumables resulting in low maintenance costs has been developed at IIT Delhi. This model is in final test stage yet to be made commercially available.”    more on Zerodor…

further notes from forward

Waterless Urinals do not require water for flushing and can be promoted at homes, institutions and public places to save water, energy and to harvest urine as a resource. Reduction in infrastructure required for water supply and waste water treatment is also a spinoff arising from installing waterless urinals. The concept, founded on the principles of ecological sanitation helps in preventing environmental damage caused by conventional flush sanitation systems.

In recent years, Human Urine has been identified as a potential resource that can be beneficially used for agriculture and industrial purposes. Human urine contains significant portion of essential plant nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphate and potassium excreted by human beings. Urine and faeces can also be separated employing systems such as urine diverting toilets. In the light of diminishing world’s phosphate and oil reserves which determine availability as well as pricing of mineral fertilisers, harvesting urine for reuse in agriculture assumes significant importance. Akin to the movement for harvesting rain water, urine harvesting is a concept which could have huge implications for resource conservation.

Link to download  book & A deeper overview:

with excerpts can be found on the the India Water Portal site  more….

Prepared By

• Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
• Vigyan Vijay Foundation

Funded by 

• UNICEF
• SEI Stockholm Environment Institute

Related articles

• UNICEF Report Highlights India’s Water Management Woes (circleofblue.org)
• SANITATION: Urban water woes (irinnews.org)
• From Water Problems to Water Solutions (slideshare.net)
• Lack of toilets, clean water costs world $260 bln a year – Liberian president (trust.org)