Microbes May Help Astronauts Transform Human Waste Into Food (phys.org)

A Penn State researcher team has shown that it is possible to rapidly break down solid and liquid waste to grow food with a series of microbial reactors, while simultaneously minimizing pathogen growth. They reported their findings in the journal Life Sciences in Space Research. Phys.Org reports: To test their idea, the researchers used an artificial solid and liquid waste that's commonly used in waste management tests. They created an enclosed, cylindrical system, four feet long by four inches in diameter, in which select microbes came into contact with the waste. The microbes broke down waste using anaerobic digestion, a process similar to the way humans digest food. The team found that methane was readily produced during anaerobic digestion of human waste and could be used to grow a different microbe, Methylococcus capsulatus, which is used as animal feed today. The team concluded that such microbial growth could be used to produce a nutritious food for deep space flight. They reported in Life Sciences in Space Research that they grew M. capsulatus that was 52 percent protein and 36 percent fats, making it a potential source of nutrition for astronauts.

Because pathogens are also a concern with growing microbes in an enclosed, humid space, the team studied ways to grow microbes in either an alkaline environment or a high-heat environment. They raised the system's pH to 11 and were surprised to find a strain of the bacteria Halomonas desiderata that could thrive. The team found this bacteria to be 15 percent protein and 7 percent fats. At 158 degrees Fahrenheit, which kills most pathogens, they grew the edible Thermus aquaticus, which consisted of 61 percent protein and 16 percent fats.

Comments

World Food Problem Solved

[Nothing2Chere]

Looks like they've solved the 3rd world food problem. Just don't tell anyone what it's made from.

Prior art.

[Brett Buck]

They already make a substance that appears to be bioprocessed human waste. It's called Marmite.

It might be nutritious...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but I hear it tastes like shit.

Re: "astronauts"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Of course not. But expenses are only enormous until they aren't. And this seems like a rather nice step in that direction.

India

[Sigvatr]

In other news, Indian street food prices tumble.

Quite normal.

[hcs_$reboot]

Microbes May Help Astronauts Transform Human Waste Into Food

since Astronauts Transform Food Into Human Waste Thanks To Microbes.

Diet dependent ; Changes

[DrYak]

There's already more than enough food for everyone.

It's more complicated than that. Depends on what people eat.

Globally, yes, planet earth can produce more food than need to keep everyone fed ( for a certain definition of "fed" ).

But if every body decide they want to have the same exact food diet as people in the developed world (think about USAmerican's love of steak. It's an entirely different approach to the word "fed" compared to above) : then you'll need at least 3 Earths worth of food production to keep everyone happy.

It's why Paul Ehrlich's 1960s neo-Malthusian predictions of mass starvation in the 1970s never happened.

No. That's more to do that those predictions (which also serves as inspirations for movies such as Soylent Green) are based on what would happen if the then tendencies were kept as is : if everybody kept reproducing like rabbits, today's world might look a bit like the over-populated slum that the science fiction back then predicted.

Except that the tendencies didn't keep. Demographic transition happened. People actually stopped reproducing as rabbits. Even the poorest developing country are nowadays showing progressive reducing of population growth.

So because the tendencies on which these prediction were made didn't keep, the prediction didn't come to happen. (Well, you still have over populated slums here and there, but not planet-wide).

Re:Diet dependent ; Changes

[AmiMoJo]

Meat replacement products are going to be huge in the near future. If you haven't tried something like an Impossible Burger you will be surprised just how much like real meat it actually is. And that's before we get to lab grown meat.

People will want this stuff not primarily because they care about the environment, but because it's healthier and cheaper. Meat grown in a sterile environment will need less drugs during it's lifetime, and will be engineered to be high quality/taste without all the effort that goes into making animals that way.

Eventually McDonalds will switch. Real meat may more or less go away completely, as it becomes hard to justify keeping animals in captivity and then killing them for food that is inferior to the synthetic stuff.

Real world food ?

[DrYak]

And by the way, the stuff that these scientists created from human dukey is not food. It may have a similar ratio of fats & protein as food, but it's not food. Astronauts will eat each other before they eat some cultured turd yogurt.

And what do you think real food is made from ?
Which substances do you think the plants process to transform into more plants (i.e.: more food) thanks to the solar power ?
Do you really think that plants make themselves using solidified light ?

HINT: Look up the word "manure".

This project is basically doing the same thing, only scaled down and accelerated by using a different set of bacteria and yeast only, compared to the usual set of bacteria + plants that do the exact same stuff every day in agriculture.
(But it's going to be difficult to pack a whole field in a space ship, so hence the interest)

You see it as a "toilet-to-mouth" system, but you should more realistically think of it as a pocket-sized field to grow food out of your (human produced) manure.

No one has made the connection yet.

[upuv]

If this tech is developed for Space travel or is an outcome of research into supporting us in space then it can most likely be ported into farming.

Who says this tech has to be used to feed humans directly. Why can't use it to improve the efficiency of animal husbandry. We can use farm wastes to more directly loop back into the production cycle. We could use it to improve the production of meat, textiles, milk, medical supplies etc.

Why not feed the outputs to say ants, and in return feed the ants to other stocks. Thus further diversifying the various protein chains making the process even more benificial.

Or we do more engineering and create organic polymers from the protein. Thus a replacement for many of the plastics in use today.

It does not have to directly feed us. As a matter of fact it can help reduce the costs associated with meat etc.

The key to the process is that it is a bio reactor that minimises infections and contamination. Thus making it more robust as an industrial system.

Marketing crap

[billybob2001]

This will obviously by marketed as Soylent Brown.

(Spoiler: it's poople!)

Can this program be instituted...

[MrSavage]

at the Congressional cafeteria? After all, they keep making us eat all the shit that they pass...

Could have told them that from ...

[gweihir]

... playing "Oxygen Not Included". After giving my whole colony food poisoning by using contaminated water in the musher, the principle and what is important became quite clear.