| Urine-diverting toilets,one of the six main types of sanitary toilet recognized by the "Technical Requirements for Construction of Rural Household Toilet(Trial)",use specialized toilet stools to separately collect and process feces and urine.Urine-diverting toilets have a lot of advantages.First,there is no need to flush the toilet after use.Besides,non-hazardously processed feces and collected urine can be used as agricultural resources.Thus,they are known as “sustainable toilets” in the academic world,which are especially applicable in water-deficient rural areas.However,when investigating rural toilets and their status across the country,the researcher found that urine-diverting toilets had not yet been widely promoted or applied.In order to figure out the reasons,the thesis studies the main factors that affect the support degree for the publicity of urine-diverting toilets,and further identifies the relevant resistances with a hope to promote the use of urine-diverting toilets.Besides,based on the research results and the theory of ecological compensation,a strategy for the promotion of urine-diverting toilets in rural areas where water is insufficient is put forward in the paper as a systematic guidance.A great deal of data indicate that the fresh urine collected in urine-diverting toilets contains few pathogenic microorganisms and can be directly utilized after diluted with three to five times water.However,the hygienic safety in urine storage has seldom been paid much attention to or studied.On this basis,the thesis studies the changes of hygienic indicators of urine during storage,which provides theoretical support for the safe utilization of urine resources collected from the fecal-urine diverting toilets.The research conclusions are summarized as follows:(1)Under the theorical framework of planned behavior,the field survey was carried out in a water-deficient village in Northwest China by means of on-site investigation,as well as door-to-door distribution and collection of questionnaires to figure out these villagers’ support degree concerning urine-diverting toilets and the factors affecting their support degree.Statistical processing and analysis of variance were conducted on the questionnaire data.According to the results,urine-diverting toilets were highly supported by respondents.Among them,55% of the respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with the urine-diverting toilets.82% of the respondents said they did not regret installing urinediverting toilets at their homes.When asked which kind of toilets would be used if there were flush toilets and urine-diverting toilets at their homes,46% of the respondents said that they had no preference or they would rather use urine-diverting toilets.Those with higher levels of education,strong environmental awareness,confidence in other villagers’ support towards it,and those who believe the fewer shortcomings of urine-diverting toilets expressed higher support for urine-diverting toilets.Therefore,behaviors like improving villagers’ environmental awareness,fostering a social norm for the use of urine-diverting toilets in society,and using social intervention to make up for the shortcomings of urine-diverting toilets,will be beneficial to the publicity of urinediverting toilets.(2)Based on the research results and the theory of ecological compensation,a set of strategies on publicizing urine-diverting toilets,with social intervention led by the government and participated in by communities,social organizations and enterprises,were put forward in the task.The publicity strategy is applicable to water-deficient rural areas in China,including measures concerning incentives and maintenance.The publicity measures include two facets,namely.Among them,incentive measures include holding mobilization meeting to introduce urine-diverting toilets,building well-functioning urinediverting toilets in families,which are popular in the village,for the visiting of other villagers,and employing local celebrities as the publicity ambassadors.The publicity measures can motivate people to build and use urine-diverting toilets and thus they can better understand how to use and maintain urine-diverting toilets.Maintenance measures mainly include regular visits to provide follow-up services,calling on local private enterprises to provide paid feces vault emptying services and collection services of excrement and urine,setting up some paid collection points for cover materials in the village,and periodically overhauling urine-diverting toilets every year.Maintenance measures relieve the user’s burden from the use of urine-diverting toilets by providing external assistance in maintenance and ensure that families who have built urine-diverting toilets can use them continuously.(3)Urease secreted by microorganisms is an important factor affecting the conversion process of substances stored in urine.Considering the phenomenon where microorganisms may arise on the inner wall of old urine containers that have been used for a long time,a comparative experiment was conducted to study the transformation process of nitrogen and phosphorus speciation of urine in urine containers with and without microorganisms attached to the inner wall.According to the result,in a container with microorganism attached to the inner wall,the time for complete hydrolysis of urine was 15 days,and the total nitrogen concentration almost remained unchanged in the first5 days and decreased by 22% after 30 days.However,in a container with no microorganisms attached to its inner wall,the time for complete hydrolysis of urine was20 days,and the total nitrogen concentration was almost remained unchanged in the first10 days and decreased by 15% after 30 days.Therefore,microorganisms attached to the inner wall of the urine containers are able to accelerate the hydrolysis of urine and the running off of nutrients.Therefore,collecting and storing urine with clean containers(without microorganisms attached to the inner wall)will not only reduce the loss of urine nitrogen nutrients,but also reduce the release of foul smell in the process of collecting and storing urine,thus improving the air quality around the toilets in rural areas.(4)This thesis simulated a scenario where urine may be contaminated by fecal coliform in specialized toilet stool,collection pipe,and urine storage bucket when urinediverting toilet is in use.Comparative experiments were used to study the change process of the value of the fecal coliform bacteria in urine contaminated and not contaminated by feces respectively which are respectively stored in containers with and without microbes attached to the inner wall.According to the result,the time for urine contaminated by feces stored in containers with and without microorganisms attached to the inner walls to reach innocuity was 60 days and 70 days respectively,while that for urine not contaminated by feces stored in containers with and without microorganisms attached to the inner walls was 40 days and 0 days,respectively,implying that fecal coliform bacteria in the feces would multiply in the nutrient-rich urine.To meet requirements on hazardfree treatment,urine contaminated by feces needed to be stored for a longer time than that not contaminated by feces.Therefore,it is of great importance to use standardized urinediverting toilets to ensure strict separation of urine and excrement,which is also a guarantee of the safety for directly using urine. |
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