Mizoram, one of India’s least populous states, has been losing its forest cover due to the age-old slash-and-burn farming method known as Jhum cultivation.
Bill Gates drinks water distilled from human faeces and urine
An innovative technology that is likely to change the future. The prototype was financed by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
That Bill Gates, who has long been one of the Planet’s richest and most influential people, has committed himself in philanthropic projects is already known. But further demonstration comes with the last prototype realised thanks to the funds of the Gates Foundation, the Omniprocessor.
Bill Gates himself in the pages of his official website tells that he personally visited the Omniprocessor, built by Janicki Bioenergy, an engineering firm based north of Seattle. Basically, the system extracts drinking water from treated human faeces and urine safely. It’s a big purifier that turns organic waste into clean water.
“I watched the piles of feces go up the conveyer belt and drop into a large bin” Gates says. “They made their way through the machine, getting boiled and treated. A few minutes later I took a long taste of the end result: a glass of delicious drinking water”.
A revolutionary technology that would help the 2 billion people who don’t have access to adequate sanitation facilities or exclusively have available contaminated water. Every year diseases caused by poor sanitation kill about 700,000 children.
The innovation of the Omniprocessor lies also in its efficiency. Indeed, as Gates explains: “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 processor can handle waste from 100,000 people, producing 86,000 litres of drinking water daily and doesn’t require new and expensive drainage systems that are usually difficult to build. Gates writes that the first prototype is going to be built in Dakar, Senegal, and that it will be monitored 24 hours a day remotely. If the processor will work, we could witness a real revolution for those who, still today, die for lack of water.
Cover image © gatesnotes.com
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