Saying that Bill Gates in an impressive person is an understatement. Take away everything he’s done with Microsoft and all the charity work he’s accomplished, and you’d still have to give the guy props for this — he drank water that was previously full of turds. Say whaaaat?!
It’s called the Omniprocessor, a machine that functions as a safe repository for human waste while generating drinking water and excess electricity that can be used as a power source. Bill Gates recently detailed his working with the machine over on his blog, “GatesNotes” and gave his opinion of the once-poo-now-clean drinking water.
“I watched the piles of feces go up the conveyer belt and drop into a large bin. 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. The water tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle. And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It’s that safe,” says Gates.
Essentially, the machine is able to do for a latrine what your city’s waste treatment plant does for your drinking water. Bill and his wife, Melinda, firmly believe that this machine has the power to revolutionize the third world and provide clean drinking water to the estimated 2 BILLION people who use latrines without proper drainage.
“The Omniprocessor is a safe repository for human waste. 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.”
The Omniprocessor was designed and built by Janicki Bioenergy, an engineering firm based north of Seattle, and unlike modern sewage plants, the Omniprocessor doesn’t burn up waste using diesel or some other fuel. It has electricity to spare and its steam engine allows it to produce enough energy to burn the next batch of waste. The next step for Bill and Melinda is to set one up in Dakar, Senegal and work with the local community. Right now, some 700,000 children die a year from diseases related to poor sanitation, but that can change with innovative tools and minds like the Ominiprocessor and Bill Gates.