Urine contains most of the excreted nutrients, which can be recovered by using different techniques, we assess which of the existing treatments for nutrient recovery from urine was best suited for a closed ecosystem habitat. Nitrification was the best-suited option. The aim of this study was to design, construct, implement and test a moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) made for a close ecosystem habitat. Furthermore, As the start-up of a nitrification bioreactor is the most critical part of the functioning of a MBBR (talking up to 45 days), we also designed and tested an experimental protocol, which included different parameters critical for the start-up phase, in order to assess if we could speed up this process. The results of the experiment to test the possible speed-up of the start-up process suggested that, from all the parameters, a 40% of sludge will give a faster start-up for a nitrification bioreactor like an MBBR. These results contrast the initial ingredients stated by the VUNA project. After construction and implementation of the bioreactor, we tested for 5 days the conditions of its functioning. The results showed that the column was building an accumulation of nitrite. (116.44 mg/L of nitrite. The value measured at the 5th day of nitrification). A possible cause of this is the no link-automatization of the pH sensor with the inlet urine pump to the column. Since the most common causes of the nitrification column failures include the accumulation of the nitrification intermediate nitrite and the selection of acid-tolerant ammonia-oxidizing bacteria. Especially during reactor start-up, the process must, therefore, be carefully supervised. Furthermore, although the nitrification process, in the MBBR designed to recover nutrients in a closed ecosystem habitat, can be achieved (based on the results obtained for the concentration of nitrate in the bioreactor at the 5th day (36.08 mg/L)), fully automatization of the system will be a requisite for future functioning of the design.PFCHA-BecasPFCHA-Becas