Effect of temperature and inoculum on high-rate ureolysis in decentralized urine treatment. urine metagenome

Nitrogen in urine is mainly present as urea. The first step to release ammonia from urea is ureolysis. In an active microbial community, ureolysis occurs within hours due to the high abundance of urease encoding genes. Centralized urine processing facilities would encounter ureolysis in pipes on the way from the toilet to the treatment plant. This would lead to ammonia loss, odor nuisance, and precipitation clogging pipes. Therefore, a high-rate but small ureolysis reactor close to the toilet would be beneficial. In this study, ureolysis was characterized in sequencing batch reactors operated with different inocula and at different temperatures.