plant-based public urinal
To coop with climate change cities invest in green infrastructure – horizontal and vertical green areas. Green areas need a lot of water for irrigation and nutrients for growth. alchemia-nova´s green walls run on wastewater, using contaminants as plant nutrients, thereby cleaning the water for re-use.
“LooPi – the plant-based public urinal for all genders” is the latest innovation in the series of functional green walls. LooPi is a combination of wastewater management & green infrastructure: wastewater is treated via the integrated green wall and re-used for flushing.
Advantages of LooPi:
- nutrients from urine are stored in biochar and made available for agriculture
- being gender neutral
- saves up to 90% of water compared to conventional urinals
- capturing CO2 from the atmosphere
- cooling and humidifying surrounding air
- reducing noise pollution
- bringing biodiversity into the city
Technical data:
- Size: 4,20 m l x 3,05 m h x 2,40 m w
- Weight: 13,5 t
- Active root volume: 4 m3
- Capacity: 30 L urine / 24 hr
- Energy demand: approx. 1 kWh/day
LooPi is currently in status prototype testing.
LooPi has been developed by alchemia-nova with the support of EOOS and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
Project leader
alchemia-nova GmbH
Project partner
University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna: Institute of Soil Research (IBF); Institute of Sanitary Engineering and Water Pollution Control (SIG)
Third party costs partner: EOOS Design GmbH
Project status
Duration: 10/2019 – 12/2021 (27 months)
Call: Förderprogramm Stadt der Zukunft, 6. Ausschreibung.
Sponsors: Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology with The Austria Research Promotion Agency (FFG)
Research category: experimental development
Rate: 60%
Total costs: € 468.649,00
Total funding: € 281.189,00
Funding recipient: alchemia-nova GmbH