Turn urine into brick to build houses

Urine combined with sand and bacteria will create a new construction material, harder than limestone tiles.

RT reported that scientists at Cape Town University (South Africa) have created special, environmentally friendly bricks. The young team collected urine from the engineer's male toilet inside the school, then mixed with sand and a bacterium that produced the urease enzyme.

The precipitation of microbial carbon helps the mixture harden at room temperature, unlike ordinary bricks that have to be burned in high temperature burners of 1,400 degrees C, releasing a lot of CO2. Specifically, the urease enzyme decomposes urea in urine and produces calcium carbonate through chemical reactions.

Biological bricks are made of urine, sand and bacteria.(Photo: RT).

'The longer you let the tiny bacteria work, the harder it will be. We can optimize this process, ' said Dyllon Randall , lead researcher.

The hardness and shape of bio bricks can be modified at will. In particular, this construction material is also capable of hardening more than 40% of limestone tiles.

Furthermore, the production of this biological brick produces a byproduct of nitrogen and potassium, which can be used to produce fertilizers.

According to researcher Randall, urine is 'liquid gold'. In quantity, urine accounts for less than 1% of household waste water, however it contains up to 80% nitrogen, 56% phosphorus and 63% potassium in wastewater.