Toilets in their current form are little different to that devised by Mr Thomas Crapper, that famous purveyor of Victorian sanitary wares. Indeed Mr Bill Gates himself, one of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s foremost billionaire philanthropists and businessmen, has questioned whether the artefact that is the flushable toilet should remain in its current, wasteful form for much longer.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If Thomas Crapper were around today, he would find our toilets quite familiar,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Bill Gates, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen many advances apart from handles and paper toilet-rolls.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There have also been the addition of S-bends to trap smells, but regardless the concept is the same and Mr Gates has decided it is time for a change.<\/p>\n
On August 14th his charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced the gold, silver and bronze medal winners in its \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcReinventing The Toilet Challenge\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. The aim of the Challenge is to bring safe, affordable and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sustainable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d loos to the 40% of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s population who lack access to basic sanitation. Up to 1.5m deaths from diarrhoea a year could be prevented.<\/p>\n
The specification of the innovative toilets is quite, well, specific. The winning device must cost less than five cents per user per day to operate, require neither a supply of clean water nor sewerage infrastructure to take the waste away, and generate energy and recover salts, water and other nutrients, producing no untoward by-products.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, with just 1 year in operation, the challenge has produced some remarkable results, achieving all of those things and more.<\/p>\n
In fact, one of the medal winners, silver in this case, was from Loughborough University in Britain, proving that we must still be considered amongst the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s foremost toilet experts.<\/p>\n
A tank feeds mixed urine and faeces through a rig that heats it to 200\u00c2\u00b0C under high pressure, killing pathogens. Returning the superheated mixture suddenly to atmospheric pressure causes it to separate into its liquid and gaseous components. The gas is used to heat the feed tank. The liquid is fed into a digester that produces enough methane to power the system\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand some to spare.<\/p>\n
If you think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clever, the gold medal winner was developed by Michael Hoffman of the California Institute of Technology, earning him the $100,000 first prize. His toilet uses solar panels to power an electrochemical system that turns waste into useful things. One is a compound which oxidises the salts in urine to generate chlorine, creating a mildly disinfecting solution that can be used to flush the toilet. The second is hydrogen, which is suitable for cooking or for powering a fuel cell to produce electricity. The residue from the process can be used as fertiliser.<\/p>\n
The innovative products are being developed into a number of prototypes to test in the field, with the hope that they will become commonplace in the future. The aim is to assist in one of the UN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most challenging, and thus far failing, Millennium Development Goals: to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to basic sanitation.<\/p>\n
Dr Hoffman claims that treating faeces just \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcisn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sexy enough\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 making it hard to get a scientific grant. Frankly, we ask, who has been saying that oxidising urine salts isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sexy?<\/p>\n
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