Bill Gates promotes in a serious video the Omniprocessor, a mini-treatment plant that converts human waste into drinking water and electricity. An initiative supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fight health problems affecting nearly 2 billion people worldwide.
Bill Gates, the famous founder of Microsoft dedicated himself, since his retirement, to philanthropy through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, presented on his blog one year ago, an innovative machine, the Omniprocessor. Created by Janicki Bioenergy, an engineering company based in North Seattle, Omniprocessor treats human faeces to turn them into drinking water and electricity.
The principle is simple: the waste is incinerated and the steam generated is used to produce electricity. And Bill Gates did not hesitate to drink a glass of water thus obtained to prove its quality. It is, he said, “as good as any bottled water.”
Innovation ?
Innovation? The energy produced is greater than the needs of the machine in terms of energy and can be sold to power other equipment. In total, receiving waste from 100 000 individuals, the Omniprocessor can produce 86,000 liters of drinking water and 250 kilowatts of electricity per day.
The prototype is currently in Seattle, but a pilot project will be deployed in Dakar. The goal for the Gates Foundation is both to reduce diseases related to sanitary deficiencies in developing countries, which kill up to 700,000 children a year, and to improve access to drinking water in these areas. India is among the countries for which Bill Gates think technology is the most appropriate.
To learn more about this project: click here.
And to watch the video: here