YouTube/thegatesnotesPosted on 01/06/2015 1:51:35 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Bill Gates has taken to his blog to discuss the latest project from the philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: a machine that transforms human waste into clean water and electricity.
According to Gates, at least 2 billion people worldwide don't have access to adequate sanitation, with human waste often polluting the water supply and remaining untreated.
The "Omniprocessor" aims to help with this problem. Its development is led by Seattle-based engineering firm Janicki Bioenergy.
The machine extracts water from sewage that's piped in or delivered to the facility. The dry sewage is then incinerated to generate steam, which powers the entire machine.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
All clean water was at one time the most foul of sewage, and will eventually end up being part of that most foul of sewage again.
The means of changing poop to clean water again vary in cost and application, and great fortune awaits he who is able to make this conversion at the best cost/benefit ratio, as that person shall surely prosper beyond the wildest dreams of avarice.
My personal suggestion? Set up a series of water desalination plants along the Atlantic coast of Morocco, powered by thorium reactors. The thorium reactors would be used to generate vast amounts of electricity, but that is incidental to this scheme, as the other byproduct of that power generation is heat. Use the heat to run towers that distill sea water, yielding fresh water, which is then pumped over the Atlas Mountains into the Sahara desert. With the growing water supply, the desert is turned back into a lush grain-production area and rain forest, eventually stretching all the way to the Nile, and with the changing weather patterns from the additional moisture, eventually green up most of what is now the arid part of the Middle East.
Meanwhile, back at where the sea water was being distilled into fresh, the brine pools are an additional revenue stream. Not as brine, but as a source of just about every mineral on earth, which is dissolved in the brine. Among of the first to be extracted are the potassium salts, which crystallizes at a much different way and in a different concentration than the dissolved sodium salts, most of which crystallize out first. This much more concentrated brine is then selectively redissolved and various other compounds, rich in specific elements, are further crystallized out, eventually becoming a very rich ore, which may then be refined using the abundant electric power from the thorium nuclear generation plants.
Eventually all these enterprises become income streams, allowing a much higher standard of support for the human population of the planet earth, and eventually providing us with the technology to finally break free from the confines of earth and move off-planet.
It’s not making water. It’s not turning poop into clean water. It’s extracting the water from sewage. It’s just a filter. What a scam.
Machines like this get rediscovered every few years. Sometimes the focus is on the electricity-producing side with potable water as a by-product. This year, it looks like the focus is on the water side.
There used to be a company called Elimanure that built such machines for farms around here, but I think they got bought out by somebody.
So what? I can turn clean water into poop.
If it is anything like Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer, what could go wrong, eh?
If they could turn excrement back into cucumbers, this would be worthy of a Jonathan Swift ping.
I sincerely doubt that even this device can clean up all the $#!+ in DC & make it palatable .....
It’s a nice invention, but it had better be completely maintenance free. Otherwise, you will set it up in some 3rd world hell-hole, and it will work for a while, until it breaks and nobody there has a clue how to fix it.
If you feed it with Windows 8, does it produce copies of XP??
Good question. The core of the system is the separation of the fecal solids from the water contained in the feces. That's apparently done by heating the wet, raw fecal matter to the point where the water boils off, something that takes a lot of heat. Apparently, that heat eventually comes from burning the dried fecal matter at high temperatures. What's used to start the fire and does burning the dried fecal matter provide enough heat to offset the cost of the starter fuel? This could be an excellent idea, but it requires more explanation.
Beautiful idea. +10
The answer is “NO”, it is not some closed loop efficiency system. BTU’s in does not equal BTU’s out to generate electricity. It may be a very business smart way to run a sewage treatment plant and co-generation for electricity, but it is still a gas fired system.
Yep - my wife used to work for a waste management plant and she told me that, by the time the waste is treated and released, the resultant discharge was clear and safe. Takes more than 5 minutes but a lot more efficient with low energy/natural processes.
LOL
FWIW, the best tomato plants you can find sprout up in the sludge piles from sewage treatment plants which spend time composting. If you know someone in a municipality who has access to treatment facilities, get them to let you dig out a dozen or so in May. Tomato seeds go unharmed thru the human digestive tract and thru our treatment ponds and end up in the treated solids mounds. We found such seedlings outproduce purchased seeds and plants by about 50%.
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