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??别看尿虽然有些恶心，但它却有着许多用途。早在两千多年前，古罗马人就在利用尿液清洗衣物和漂染织物。如今，人们虽然已经摒弃了尿液的这两种用途，但却正在发现它的新用途。利用尿液为微生物提供丰富的营养物质，从而实现木材的堆肥，由此为人们提供一种清洁低碳的供暖方式。你知道吗？
using urine to heat homes
利用尿液来取暖
waste not, want not
俭以防匮
urine, though?distained?by modern society, was once surprisingly useful stuff. street-facing laundries in ancient rome had pissoirs attached to them, to encourage passers-by in need of relief to provide, free of charge, a raw material which was then fermented into a degreasing agent.?
虽然尿液被现代社会的人们所嫌弃，但它曾经却是一种非常有用的东西。在古罗马，街边的洗衣店都会放一个尿桶在外面，欢迎那些内急的路人前来撒尿（提供原料），然后尿液经发酵成为了脱脂剂。
urine also found employment as a?mordant, to assist in the dying of cloth—scottish tweed was once?notorious?for smelling of the stuff when it got wet. and urine was, too, a source of potassium nitrate, one of the ingredients of gunpowder.
尿液还是一种媒染剂，被用于织物的染色，苏格兰粗花呢就曾因潮湿时散发出尿液的气味而臭名远扬。此外，尿液还是硝酸钾（火药的成分之一）的一大来源。
now, chen wei-shan of wageningen university, in the netherlands, thinks he has found yet another use for urine—and one relevant to today’s needs rather than yesterday’s. he plans to employ it to create heat without fire from waste wood.
如今，荷兰瓦赫宁根大学的陈伟杉认为，他发现了尿液的一种新用途——一种与人们当今（而非过去）的需求有关的用途。他计划利用尿液产生热量，以代替废木生火的方式。
burning wood is a good source of heat and it can be seen as sound from the point of view of greenhouse gases. that is because the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere came?thence?in the first place, and would return there anyway if the wood in question were simply allowed to rot.?
烧柴是一种很好的产热方式，并且从温室气体的角度来看，这种方式也是很合理的。这是因为释放到大气中的二氧化碳首先是从那里出来的，而且木材中的二氧化碳无论通过何种方式终将回到大气中。
but wood fires also bring environmental disbenefits, for they?give off?sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and other?noxious?gases along with that co2.?researchers have therefore been looking for ways to release wood’s latent heat by?composting?rather than combustion.?
不过木材燃烧也会带来环境危害，因为燃烧过程除了会释放二氧化碳外，还会释放出二氧化硫、一氧化碳以及其他有毒气体。因此，研究人员一直以来都在寻找一种通过堆肥（而非燃烧）来释放木材潜在热能的方式。
unfortunately, unlike other stuff that is routinely composted (dung and waste food, for example) wood does not, by itself, contain a wide enough range of nutrients to sustain the relevant micro-organisms. to digest it, these bugs need dietary supplements. and those—things like ammonium chloride—are too expensive for everyday use.
遗憾的是，不像其他常规堆肥材料（例如粪便和剩饭剩菜），木材本身并没有足够的营养物质以维持相关微生物的生存。为了将木材消化，我们需要为这些微生物提供膳食补充剂。而就日常使用而言，这类补充剂（例如氯化铵）太过昂贵。
but urine is cheap—or would be, if routine ways of collecting it existed. and it contains large quantities of nitrogen and potassium (as its use in gunpowder demonstrates) and also of phosphorus (an element that was, as it happens, discovered by an alchemist trying to extract gold from urine).?
但尿液却很便宜，换句话说，如果存在一种收集尿液的常规方式，那么它的成本就会很低。尿液中含有大量的氮和钾（正如它在火药中的应用所证明的那样），以及磷（一位试图从尿液中提取金的炼金术士偶然间发现了该元素）。这些元素都是堆肥相关微生物生长繁殖所需的营养物质。
these are all nutrients which composting bugs need to thrive. so, as he writes in acs sustainable chemistry & engineering, dr chen decided to give it a go.?to this end, he and his colleagues added urine to kiln-dried ash wood and composted the result in glass bottles.?the team found that?oxygen consumption, wood consumption and heat production all rose rapidly in the jars during the experiment’s first week.?
因此，正如陈伟杉发表在《acs可持续化学与工程》期刊上的文章所说的那样，他决定试一试。为此，他和他的同事将尿液添加至窑干的白蜡木中，并将其封在玻璃瓶中堆肥。研究小组发现，在实验的第一周，瓶中氧气和木材正在迅速消耗，同时热量也在迅速产生。
previous experiments suggest that compost-heaps of wood fed suitable nutrients can sustain internal temperatures of 40-55°c for long periods. that is high 
enough to be useful for heating buildings and, with a bit of a boost, perhaps for providing hot water as well.?
过去的实验表明，用适当的营养物质对木材进行堆肥可以使其内部温度长期维持在40-55℃。这一温度足以用来为建筑物供暖，如果温度能再高一点，甚至还可以用来供应热水。
to commercialise the idea would mean designing a suitable reactor and heat exchanger, but the waste-wood fuel would be cheap. how you would go about gathering the necessary urine in bulk, given the expense of installing a network of suitably dedicated collection points, is not clear.?
而想要使这一想法商业化，就必须设计一个合适的反应堆和热交换器，不过废木料倒是很便宜。但考虑到建立专用的尿液收集网络的费用，如何收集到足够的尿液还很成问题。
(黑体标注词为重难点词汇)?
本文翻译：vinnie
重难点词汇：
distain?[d?s’te?n] v. 变色；将……弄脏
mordant?[?m??rdnt] n. 媒染剂
notorious?[no??t??ri?s] adj. 声名狼藉的；臭名昭著的
thence?[eens] adv. 从那里；因此；从那时起
give off?发出；长出
noxious?[?nɑ?k??s] adj. 有害的；有毒的
compost?[?kɑ?mpo?st] n. 堆肥；混合物 vt. 堆肥
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