Slashdot Mirror
Solar-Powered Toilet Torches Waste For Public Health
Daniel_Stuckey writes "With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Reinvent the Toilet challenge, [a] team has developed a toilet that uses concentrated solar power to scorch and disinfect human waste, turning feces into a useful byproduct called biochar ... a sanitary charcoal material that is good for soils and agriculture. By converting solid waste to biochar (liquid waste is diverted elsewhere, as it's easier to deal with), the toilet thus allows for sanitary waste disposal without huge infrastructure investments. The toilet itself, called the Sol-Char, is a fascinating bit of engineering. In order to sanitize waste without the help of massive treatment facilities, Linden's team instead designed the toilet to scorch waste in a chamber heated by fiber optic cables that pipe in heat from solar collectors on the toilet's roof. 'A solar concentrator has all this light focused in on one centimeter. It'd be fine if we could bring everyone's fecal waste up to that one point, like burning it with a magnifying glass,' Linden said. 'But that's not practical, so we were thinking of other ways to concentrate that light.'"
We need to think of sanitation as a business opportunity, and turn the toilet into a status symbol.
AL (LOOKS UPWARD) Oh, dad. Look. I'm sitting on a Ferguson of my own. Just like you knew I would.
PEGGY (BEAT) Remember this at the trial, kids.
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
No shit?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
While Bill has a lot of resources to shove on these projects, he is also showing an example of "let's get up and go fix the world". I bet there are even more things to do and fix than the projects on which Gates is working on. It does not always even have to be based on some revolutionary technology or heaps of cash, there are possibilities that just have to be utilized. Let's do it.
So here we have this commode that uses solar power to burn turds and they want people in developing nations to install and use them while the wealthy in the developed world continue flushing their porcelain thrones with gallons of fresh potable water? Perfect.
For places without sewage plumbing but still not isolated enough that a hole in the ground is sufficient and where separation+infiltration is not viable either, there are mulching toilets, but in those you still need to change not too pleasant buckets once in a while. But there are also incinerating toilets using either gas (propane) or electricity, and they're quite OK. All that is left is a small can of ash, that can be used in the garden. This solar toilet looks to be just another way of providing the heat in such a toilet.
Eh no.
Look up pyrolysis. Instead of simmering for hours in tropical heat, the poo will be subject to pyrolysis in mere minutes in a low oxygen environment. Gases produced will be mainly syngas, which is odourless.
Also - it is crazy complicated. I have a "bio" outhouse in my summer house that is in essence just a plastic container. You fill the bottom and a filtering compartment with sawdust. Liquids go through sawdust and seep under a bush. Every time you take a dump you throw a bit of sawdust on it. It does not smell (actually, as i use juniper sawdust, it smells quite pleasantly like gin). The end result i put under another bush in autumn and use as a fertilizer next spring. Why would i use a complex system of solar power and fiber and lord knows how many dollars to achieve the same end result?
Composting human waste is fantastic for spreading human diseases all over the food supply...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Why would you used a complex system like this? Because you are not at your summer house and instead in Haiti right after the earth quake where they can bring a bunch of these things in easily and have a more sanitary situation then waiting a year for it to decompose properly. Now exchange Haiti with any other city and any other disaster and you won't have to worry about your kids picking berries and foraging for food from the bush your neighbor shits under.
Agreed.
When some people accumulate enough wealth, they become empowered enough to make a difference in the history of man. Some ( like Gates ) are using their resources in a way which will benefit humanity, others will go out and buy all the rental property they can.
I am hoping so badly ( hoping, mind you, not really anticipating ) that our lawmakers in Congress will see and craft tax law to encourage the kind of stuff Gates is doing and closing all of these tax advantages of simply rent-seeking and financial churning.
If Gates gets favorable tax treatments for doing this kind of stuff, it only empowers him to do more similar things as well as lead others to use the power of their wealth in a similar manner.
If there is one thing Gates has demonstrated over and over, he does have the leadership, organizational, and business skills to do it.
I know I have left lots of anti-Microsoft rants here: I feel hypocritical in posting this. Those rants were my venting my frustration as an older guy about software becoming so un-necessarily complex with all these special interest groups trying to get their proprietary add-ons adopted into Windows that pranksters have started having a heyday leaving a mess in everyone's machine. I was rooting for a very simple but thoroughly understood OS that was pretty damned bulletproof. My feeling was if pranksters thought setting people's fancy little outhouses on fire, then what I wanted was a simple one made out of cinder block.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Yes they worry about it, and for good reason.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...
Cholera, typhoid, shigellosis, Ecoli, are just a few of the major medical problems you can get from poor sanitary conditions and if untreated which may be difficult in times of a disaster, you could die from it.
I'm not aware of how that might be absurd.. Unless I misunderstood the meaning of your post.
LOL indeed! Did you know that when your ancestors were still throwing their shit out the window every morning into the gutter, and took a bath maybe one or two times a year, the Muslim world (much of which is black, incidentally) had sewer systems and the closest thing to modern medicine available at the time? Yeah, I bet you didn't. History seems highly unlikely to be your strong point.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I was thinking, "why yes, 'solar powered toilet torches', whatever those might be, probably are a waste for public health ..."
This is a classic example of too much technology, over thinking and wasting energy and other resources. It would be far, far better to compost the manure and urine creating value soil amendment.
Oh, wait, you say that isn't an option in the cities. Well, cities, yes, well, there's your problem.
All the eco-friendly stuff is ignored by building codes, so while this toilet might exist and have potential, good luck getting it to pass local codes for permitting. Whether you want to build a membrane structure (like a yurt) or use composting toilets or harvest rainwater or use solar for your electricity, you'll have a hard time getting any of it approved. If they're going to make toilets like this, they need to make an effort to get building codes across the country fixed to allow lower-footprint solutions. In many places it's even illegal to live with solar/wind alone and they will come after you if you're not connected to the power grid.
you'd be surprised at how old days had solved this problem. The real reason we pipe sewage away is for convenience. (toilets are sometimes called a "convenience" for a reason).
In the past you basically had a pit that you shat into. The trick then is to cover it with a layer of dry dirt. Try dryness is what's important. This soaks up the wetness of the turds and really converts it from a nasty smelly thing into.. well, basically dirt.
There was a programme on TV about what we did before water closets. It was surprising to me to see just how little dry dirt was required.
Anyway, back to this contraption - its another western technical solution to fundamental problems that don't need solving. What needs taking out to rural africa and other poor places is education. The reason you get diseases spreading out there is because people just shit in the street (seen it, different programme about squat toilets)(BTW these are the only 2 I've seen, I don't go hunting down TV about people pooping, just for the record :) ). I'm sure UV is a better disinfectant than a complicated (and relatively expensive) system of burning sorry turds, and I'm sure this system will be impractical in many places. Until you explain to people why disease spreads, they'll continue to shit in the street.
yeah, because moving away from user built composting toilets with natural materials that can be maintained by a person with 1 hour of training and moving towards complex systems that depend on the latest technology, labs to manufacture and engineers to maintain is good?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Well, I ride without a helmet all the time. It's only a hazard if have an accident and a helmet can introduce it's own set of hazards too. That being said, I specifically choose to not wear a helmet and if I wreck, I am endangering only my life.
If you injure yourself you will not show up to work, and society at large will have to pay for your medical surgery and expenses if you're not dead, possibly for years or the rest of your life. Thus most developed countries ban the use of motorbikes without helmet.
In all fairness, though, traditional composting toilets can't handle the volume produced in urban settings. They may be great for homes, but not so much for apartment housing, dormitories, airport terminals, etc. Biochar toilets can be adapted to meet at least some of these needs.
Another point: biochar acts something like a catalyst to improve soil but is not consumed in the process. The carbon is effectively sequestered for thousands of years, but biocharred enriched soils are better at appropriate release of moisture and nutrients while also diluting many soil toxins.
This might seem like the magic cure-all to all post-modern ills, but it isn't all blue sky hype. Each gram of biochar adds the surface area of a tennis court to the soil; a little bit of it goes a long way.
One last point: composting toilets only work well if they are properly managed. I had the misfortune of having a country neighbor for several years who was learning how to manage her composting toilet, and there were definitely episodes of odor problems.
Will
Well, yes, but with this difference: incineration pumps all the carbon in the poop into the atmosphere. Biochar production uses the heat to run a pyrolytic, anaerobic reaction where a good portion of the carbon is turned to charcoal and sequestered away for several thousand years. Since the charcoal retains the microscopic physical structures of cell walls, etc, it also has some very good soil building qualities, such as retaining fertilizers for slow release and increasing the moisture holding capability of the soil.
Will
As pointed out several times already, there would be no odor from biochar production: what would produce the odors is burned as part of the process.
Not emphasized, but of great importance, is that biochar sequesters carbon for thousands of years.
Also not emphasized, but also of great importance, biochar is a potent soil amendment. It can recover the health of soils depleted by monoculture farming practices, for instance.
Will
Sounds like something straight out of the humanure book.
IIRC, the compost in a properly setup and maintained system will destroy pathogens, at least according to the tests the author did.
IMO, the technology/cost of this biochar system seems like it could, in most circumstances, be spent better elsewhere, since a humanure setup should cost less and be able to be built with mostly local materials.