Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Endorses Water From Human Waste
theodp writes: GeekWire reports that Bill gates is certainly leading by example, appearing in a video in which he sips "a glass of delicious drinking water" produced from human waste processed by Janicki Bioenergy's OmniProcessor, which can take sewer sludge and turn it into clean drinking water, electricity and clean ash. So how was it? "The water tasted as good as any I've had out of a bottle," said Bill. "And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It's that safe."
Water's water - given the diffusion time we're probably all drinking King Tut's piss today (not to mention plenty of other peoples/animals).
Bear Grylls could not be reached for comment.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
http://www.dilbert.com/2012-11...
Where do people think their water comes from? Dependent on your location it is either pulled from a dam / river / ocean which has shit, corpses (animal and human), bacteria and all sorts of nasties or it comes from a waste water treatment plant after the solid waste has been removed.
The process is the same, ram the water under pressure against a membrane. Water goes through, other stuff doesn't. The biggest challenge is actually the medication that goes into the waste water system. It generally means that the solid waste that is removed by your treatment plant can't be used directly without additional treatment.
I mean the guy already excelled at selling SHIT to people for years...
Cheap shot gets an instant mod-up, to "Insightful," no surprise there.
I suppose it frequently tastes a better than metropolitan city water though...
Unlikely, since it frequently is metropolitan city water.
Why would anyone want to turn waste into drinking water and electricity?
Because a shocking number of people, at least 2 billion, use latrines that aren't properly drained. Others simply defecate out in the open. The waste contaminates drinking water for millions of people, with horrific consequences: Diseases caused by poor sanitation kill some 700,000 children every year, and they prevent many more from fully developing mentally and physically.
If we can develop safe, affordable ways to get rid of human waste, we can prevent many of those deaths and help more children grow up healthy.
Western toilets aren't the answer, because they require a massive infrastructure of sewer lines and treatment plants that just isn't feasible in many poor countries.
One idea is to reinvent the toilet, which I've written about before.
Another idea is to reinvent the sewage treatment plant.
Today, in many places without modern sewage systems, truckers take the waste from latrines and dump it into the nearest river or the ocean --- or at a treatment facility that doesn't actually treat the sewage. Either way, it often ends up in the water supply. If they took it to the Omniprocessor instead, it would be burned safely. The machine runs at such a high temperature (1000 degrees Celsius) that there's no nasty smell; in fact it meets all the emissions standards set by the U.S. government.
Before we even started the tour, I had a question: Don't modern sewage plants already incinerate waste? I learned that some just turn the waste into solids that are stored in the desert. Others burn it using diesel or some other fuel that they buy. That means they use a lot of energy, which makes them impractical in most poor countries.
The Omniprocessor solves that problem. Through the ingenious use of a steam engine, it produces more than enough energy to burn the next batch of waste. In other words, it powers itself, with electricity to spare. The next-generation processor, more advanced than the one I saw, will handle waste from 100,000 people, producing up to 86,000 liters of potable water a day and a net 250 kw of electricity.
From Poop To Potable: This Ingenious Machine Turns Feces Into Drinking Water
Did anyone really think Bill Gates would have the opinion "We can never drink water molecules that used to have poop next to them. That's just gross."
People can be skeptical whether a particular water purification process is adequate, but anyone who thinks water can't be purified is just an idiot and probably also homophobic (i.e. the category of people who are compelled to irrationality regarding things that seem gross to them).
Say what you want about Bill Gates, but he doesn't seem like the type to be idiotically irrational.
And it doesn't seem to be hurting the astronauts on the ISS (from the year 2000)
The ECLSS Water Recycling System (WRS), developed at the MSFC, will reclaim waste waters from the Space Shuttle's fuel cells, from urine, from oral hygiene and hand washing, and by condensing humidity from the air. Without such careful recycling 40,000 pounds per year of water from Earth would be required to resupply a minimum of four crewmembers for the life of the station.
Not even research animals are excused from the program.
"Lab animals on the ISS breath and urinate, too, and we plan to reclaim their waste products along with the crew's. A full complement of 72 rats would equal about one human in terms of water reclamation," says Layne Carter, a water-processing specialist at the MSFC.
It might sound disgusting, but water leaving the space station's purification machines will be cleaner than what most of us drink on Earth.
"The water that we generate is much cleaner than anything you'll ever get out of any tap in the United States," says Carter. "We certainly do a much more aggressive treatment process (than municipal waste water treatment plants). We have practically ultra-pure water by the time our water's finished."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I guess I expect more intellegence from slashdot readers, it used to be that way any way.
Comments about "Gates selling shit" and "its faked" do nothing except show that you are ignorant and childish. What comes out of that unit is both distilled and then filtered (probably some sort of reverse osmosis filter that could do an ok job of cleaning the water on its own.) Since it is distilled there is no bacteria in it unless it it has been recontaminated further down the line.
The whole point of this is that there are plenty of places in the world with not much in the line of clean drinkable water. People live in those places. Poor people living in poor countries that can't afford (or chose not to) provide clean drinking water to thier people. Those peoples health and well being would be greatly improved by having safe clean water available. Their lifestyle and economic well being would be greatly improved if that water was available somewhere close to where they live.
Here is a solution that will take something that is found in abundance everywhere humans and their animals live and turn it in to something that is needed and desired enough that a person may be able to make a living running the thing. It is a solution that a small company (or village) could afford, as opposed to something costing tens of millions of dollars.
Here is a link to the web site of a small town in the US that just spent $21 million on a treatment plant plus another 30 million on sewage lines:
https://www.gocolumbiamo.com/P...
How many little third world villages do you suppose can raise $51 million?
Way to go Mr Gates!
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison