Question by REPUBLICAN AND PROUD: Recycling waste?
On a space station, or here in Earth, how can someone recycle their waste (from the toilet) and make it into something productive?
Could it not just be thrown out of the space station and let float around?
Best answer:
Answer by rsgreenhoe
here is one option my friend,,
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_waste_010814-1.html
i would not want to just throw it into space because someones space ship may hit it after it has frozen and cause major catastophy,
Give your answer to this question below!
On Earth you can get away with “throwing stuff away” for a very long time, just because Earth is so big. But the more people there are per square meter, the more of a problem fouling the nest becomes. In space, on a tiny spaceship, it can be a catastrophe. You have two issues, water and everything else. You want the water and the rest of the waste as separated as possible, and you want as little loss and as much utility as possible. So you need to recycle, relentlessly.
The human body is an open system. Food comes in, waste goes out. One of the primary jobs of the lower G-I tract is to extract as much water as possible from the waste before it is ejected. Otherwise we’d dehydrate a lot faster. But such a system means we need a constant supply source. Fortunately, we live on Earth.
Earth is a closed system, but a very big one. Concentrated waste is shipped somewhere that it can become diluted by natural water and reprocessed by microorganisms, who can’t really tell it from dirt. Eventually the minerals reenter the food chain as fertilizer. Animal waste has been used as fertilizer for millennia. We don’t use human waste because of the possibility of spreading human diseases, but with proper sterilization, it would be safe.
A spaceship is a very small, closed system. Everything you dump overboard is no longer available for use. If you’re only staying for a week or you expect a supply ship to come by soon, it’s not a problem because your system isn’t closed. But if you are on a long haul voyage, everything counts. The water you drink will eventually end up being the water you drink again because the alternative is running out of water. So whatever combination of filters and treatments is necessary to make it happen will be there. Most Earthbound sewage treatment systems don’t do “Tertiary Treatment” because it’s expensive, but necessity is a great motivator. (And even secondary treatment produces what the industry calls “sludge”, which has to be disposed of and often ends up in remote forests where it can fertilize safely away from people.)
But some water is left in the waste because micro-organisms need it too. They break down the waste even further, separating toxins and nutrients, making it fit to grow plants in. We have a long, long way to go in developing this science for long space voyages but it is clearly possible.
This all seems distasteful to contemplate because we are not used to seeing such a compact re-use cycle. But the cycle has to be small enough and efficient enough to fit into the system or the system won’t work. A lot of planning and ingenuity will need to go into designing a long term, self-contained space system. Decisions about safety, efficiency and practicality have to be made. (The astronauts may have to go vegetarian because meat production is very inefficient.) And there are other issues, like recycling carbon dioxide back into free oxygen. (Closed system, remember?) So, even though we don’t quite have the technology to practically do all this, we have a general idea of what needs to be done. And necessity, as always, will drive invention, whether in the tiny closed system of a spaceship, or a big one like Earth.
Students have asked if we can send our waste(garbage) into space. There are treaties against this stating that no one owns space.
On earth, from ships out beyond the legal limit(around 15 miles) wastes may be discharges. There are currently islands of plastics in the Pacific where the currents come together, from dumping wastes.
A couple unusual items from the space station, at first there were no special facilities for women, later a stand up bag was developed. Regarding shaving, they did not think about the fact that the whiskers would float around in no gravity.
On earth again, there are recycling toilets available for cottages where there is no sewage disposal.
In other countries where human waste is used for fertilizer, they have to wash the vegetables that grow beneath the ground in Clorox because of the diseases that could be spread.
Water treatment plants have compost available, but it is only to be used on flowers, not food. This is because of heavy metals in the sewage from industries. The compost is from the solids. In non industrial areas the liquid compost is injected into farm crops that animals eat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_recycling