Carina Kolodny writes This Toilet Will Zap Your Poop Into Fuel (And Save Lives).
Holy sss..smokes! Here's a new idea everyone can use. A solar powered toilet that turns your poop into little charcoal-like pellets that can be used as fertilizer or fuel. The Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation established the "Reinvent the Toilet challenge to "develop waterless, hygienic toilets that do not require a sewer connection or electricity and cost less than five cents per user per day." Sol-Char is the proto-type.
A team led by University of Colorado professor Karl Linden has made a prototype toilet capable for turning feces into a charcoal-like substance that can be used as fertilizer or fuel. The toilet, called Sol-Char Toilet, uses a combination of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto fiberoptic cables, which heat and sterilize human waste to 600 degrees Fahrenheit and turn it into a bio-product instead of just -- well, crap.
“We are doing something that has never been done before,” Linden said on the school's website. “While the idea of concentrating solar energy is not new, transmitting it flexibly to a customizable location via fiber-optic cables is the really unique aspect of this project.”
It might not sound especially glamorous, but poop is one of the world's biggest problems. Every year, poor sanitation contributes to the deaths of 1.5 million children from diarrhea, according to the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation. Sol-Char is funded as part of the foundation's Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, which funds research to "develop waterless, hygienic toilets that do not require a sewer connection or electricity and cost less than five cents per user per day."
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding to the University of Colorado to develop this prototype which will be unveiled at a special event in New Delhi this Saturday. The article does not say whether Bill or Melinda will also provide the poop for the demonstration, but seriously, they deserve much credit for their great work in developing nations. In places where both water, sewers, fuel, and fertilizer are all scare this is a brilliant and creative solution. We should congratulate everyone involved in this project.
And, I really hope no one accuses me of being full of .... oh well.
6:38 PM PT: Paging John Crapper on line 2, (h/t pucklady)