The URINIT (intensified and robust water and nutrient recovery from urine for space exploration) project aimed to develop a robust and sustainable approach to treat urine in space for crewed space flights and extended durations. The approach built on several innovative inputs:

1. The URIDIS is a chemical-free, electrochemical process that alkalinizes urine thereby inhibiting ureolysis, while producing disinfectants
2. A nutrient recovery bioreactor using a bio-mineral forming microorganism in biocatalyst form, enabling bio-struvite precipitation
3. A nitrification reactor employing novel nitrifying bacteria in biocatalyst form
4. A reverse osmosis process to recover water

The overall urine treatment can be done with different combinations of these processes, that have been untried for urine processing (except URIDIS), allowing for intensification, minimize chemical needs and create a better and safer space toilet. Cranfield University and HYDROHM tackled the challenge of connecting the different treatment steps to determine the best approach in terms of efficiency, power consumption, reliability and recovery potential. This was done by combining laboratory experiments, treating real urine, with the different processes to produce mass and energy balances and completing calculations to understand the feasibility and potential of the combined processes for mission scenario of 650 days for 1 astronaut.