It’s a little odd to imagine drinking water that has been created using piles upon piles of feces. Yes, you heard it right. Feces. Bill Gates and his team of experts have created a system that has been designed to combat the global problem of the lack of clean drinking water in developing countries.

The project is called Omniprocessor, designed and built by Janicki Bioenergy, and is a reinvented sewage treatment plant that burns human waste and produces water and electricity. The safe repository system for human waste not only burns human feces, which would in normal circumstances be dumped into the nearest river or ocean, but it also creates enough energy to burn the next batch of waste, while electricity spared t can be redistributed to the community. The next-generation processor will be able to handle waste from 100,000 people, producing up to 86,000 litres of potable water a day and a net 250 kW of electricity.

The Bill Gates foundation is funding the development of Omniprocessor, in hopes that the processor will one day be cheap enough that entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries will want to invest in them and then start profitable waste-treatment businesses. The next step for this project is setting up the Omniprocessor in Dakar, Denegal, where Janicki will study how to connect with the local community and to emphasize the importance of such an invention.

Although it may be years before the processor will be used widely, the steps that Janicki has taken is inspiring and may, in due time, reduce the chance of millions of life loss due to water contamination by waste.

Source Reference: This Ingenious Machine Turns Feces Into Drinking Water

Photo: Bill Gates Facebook