On reinventing the toilet, Janicki Bioenergy, an engineering firm based north of Seattle, have developed a project called the Omniprocessor. It converts feces into clean drinking water. The quality of water meets the WHO guidelines for drinking water quality. This is the initiative of Bill Gates. See www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Omniproce...From-Poop-to-Potable

The question is: who would drink water, psychologically, even though it is safe, bacteriologically?

F H Mughal

Dear Mughal,

Thanks for posting about this, I had also seen this (on Facebook) and was going to post about it. You beat me to it.
Here is the direct link to the video showing Bill Gates drinking the water from this proecess:



About drinking the water, this was just a publicity stunt by Bill Gates and his team (excellent publicity stunt in my opinion, certainly grabs the attention of the media).

However, in "real life" producing drinking water from this sewage sludge processing unit would most likely not be the aim.
Actually I am not so sure what is really so innovative about it. Our colleagues in South Africa are quietly doing something very similar (LaDePa process). We have discussed it here on the forum (3 pages):
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/53-fae...-in-ethekwini-durban

Note they also uploaded two video clips recently:



and



It shows processing of faecal sludge from pit latrines in South Africa.

Coming back to that process by Janicki Industries, I wonder how expensive this machinery is and whether it can really be run in an energy-producing fashion. After all, it takes energy to dewater and dry the sludge.

Let's ask them some serious questions and perhaps we could have a nice conversation about it here on the forum?
Note also the comments (207 so far!!) at the bottom of the blog post (although many of them are more in general about Bill Gates and his Foundation's work):
www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Omniproce...From-Poop-to-Potable

A section from the blog post:

The Omniprocessor solves that problem. Through the ingenious use of a steam engine, it produces more than enough energy to burn the next batch of waste. In other words, it powers itself, with electricity to spare. The next-generation processor, more advanced than the one I saw, will handle waste from 100,000 people, producing up to 86,000 liters of potable water a day and a net 250 kw of electricity.

If we get it right, it will be a good example of how philanthropy can provide seed money that draws bright people to work on big problems, eventually creating a self-supporting industry. Our foundation is funding Janicki to do the development. It’s really amazing to see how they’ve embraced the work; founder Peter Janicki and his family have traveled to Africa and India multiple times so they can see the scope of the problem. Our goal is to make the processors cheap enough that entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries will want to invest in them and then start profitable waste-treatment businesses.

Greetings,
Elisabeth

Dear Elisabeth,

Thank you for giving some insights on this. Your comments would serve as a good source of information. I liked that.

By the way, I cannot see the videos in your post - the space is just blank!! Can you help?

Regards,

F H Mughal

I'm wondering about the cost of water per 1,000 gallons of water produced. Here, the cost of drinking water from municipal sources is about PRs. 10 per 1,000 gallons (1 US$ = PRs. 100, roughly). What would be the cost of water from this machine? What about the air pollution, noise and odour problems?

Assuming that the machine is installed here, what happens if it breaks down. Experts from Seattle would have to fix it - imagine the cost involved - international travel, local costs . The operation and maintenance costs (O&M), I reckon, must be prohibitive, for the developing countries. You also need qualified operators to operate this machine.

Since, regular monitoring of final water quality is crucial, this in turn, will entail high O&M costs.

Again, as I said previously: who will drink this water, psychologically?

Perhaps, someone from Bill Gates Foundation can clarify.

F H Mughal

Hello,

Excellent publicity stunt indeed, and this can hopefully help to put faecal sludge management on the agenda (and think a bit less just about toilets).

The psychological aspects are important... but this being said, I recently blogged on www.wateraid.org/news/news/gates-drinks-water-made-from-faeces that after all, depending where you live, a good proportion of your drinking water may already come from recycled wastewater, especially if your municipal supply uses river abstraction. The disgust factor is removed when people don't know or don't care where their water comes from - because they can trust their water supply.

So for me the question would be, is the Omniprocessor (and for that matter, other similar innovations) the kind of technology that would attract water utilities in developing cities? I certainly hope so (and past experience in Europe has shown that technological advances can generate enough excitement to trigger sanitation advances in municipalities) but it also has to be pitched right.

Rémi

Hi,
Interesting machine and great publicity indeed. My main concern is how will this machine interact with its surrounding context. I have some minor issues and a very big one.

Let's start with the minor issues. These go across various domains, which for clarity sake I have ordered using the FIETS (financial, institutional, technical, environmental, social) approach:

- Financial : the video states that the entrepreneur will be paid at both ends, both for the sludge received as for the end- and by-products. Who exactly will pay? Who will set these fees?
- Institutional: Under which standards and regulations will this plant fall? Who will monitor and enforce these?
- Technological: Availability of spare parts is always an issue of concern. So is also the training of technical operators. What are the external inputs and are these readily available?
- Environmental: Are odour issues addressed? Is there formation of toxic gases? Also good to note is that there may be a lot of solid waste mixed with the sludge.
Social: Acceptability of the end-product is an issue, as discussed above. Another issue may be that no one wants to live near the plant.

The big (and smelly) issue is however a different one. In most cities 80% of the sh*t disappears on-site. This includes leaking septic tanks, unlined latrines, and other on-site facilities which are directly discharging in drains and creeks. The underlying thought behind the development of this machine is that if somehow will make money out of human waste, there will be an incentive to collect it. However, for most entrepreneurs it will be difficult to invest in such a system if proper containment and collection is not mandatory and enforced. This requires capacity on the ground for public officials, proper regulations and a regulatory body, financial mechanisms for the poorest households etc. In short, a big push from the public sector.
This leads to a 'chicken and egg' situation: does the entrepreneur lead the way with innovation, or should the public sector first create an environment for private parties to thrive? My gut feeling is that the latter option seems more viable. New technologies will always be needed, but if there is not a context in which they can function it will be very difficult for new entrepreneurs to rise to the occasion.
So in short, great technology, but we need a lot more to really clean up the urban sanitation mess!

Giacomo

I have only just seen this. I have one big question. WHY IS GATES WASTING ITS MONEY ON SUCH AN IRRELEVANT TOPIC. No doubt, its possible to clean wastewater to the extent that it could be drunk but why bother - there will always be other less problematic and cheaper options. It is bound to be costly and there is always the chance that it will not function properly and then there is a very high risk of disease transmission. We seem to go round in circles and the same impractical ideas come up every 30 years ago. One of the first books on sanitation that I read, with chapters from some of th pioneers like John Kalbermatten and Duncan Mara, concluded with a chapter on a scheme to convert sewage to drinking water in Namibia. The editors provided an introduction saying that it had been included as an example of how not to try to solve water supply and sanitation challenges. In my view they were quite right but we seem to have forgotten many of the basic lessons about how to introduce improved sanitation systems while worrying about supposed solutions that are more and more esoteric.

Dear Kevin,

Well, I think it is not quite correct to compare the Omni Processor with the advanced wastewater treatment plants in Namibia...

The point is, and that did not come out clearly in the press release: this is a sewage sludge treatment process, not a sewage treatment process. So it only processes the sludge.

That aspect about the drinking water was in my opinion purely for the added media attention but not because anyone would want to really put this process water into the water supply network. It was just to get the media attention. The headline "Bill Gates drings water from feces" is much more catchy than "Bill Gates inspected the pilot plant of a new sewage sludge processing unit"...

If I remember right we had in the 1980s or 1990s a minister in Germany who famously drank water directly from our river Rhine to demonstrate that it was no longer as polluted as it had been before. But he did not advocate that from now on, everyone should drink raw river water. Come to think of it, politicians do that from time to time (drinking certain waters), even though it proves nothing of course...

By the way, there is already a Wikipedia page on the Omni Processor now ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omni_Processor ). Someone from Birmingham started it and I saw it by coincidence as it was linked from the sewage sludge treatment page that I have on my watch list (and which still needs further work):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_sludge_treatment

After I saw it, I improved it a little, because it had also confused it for a sewage treatment process.

Apart from this, I agree that this process is probably not particularly relevant to most developing countries. Why do I say that? Well there are already other sewage sludge treatment processes out there that can be set up to produce electricity, like the Camby process which has been around for quite some years ( www.cambi.no/wip4/detail.epl?cat=10636 ).

The problem is that to make the additional capital investment wortwhile, it only works if the electricity prices are reasonably high. In many developing countries they are highly subsidised though to make energy "cheap".
You can see e.g. here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing :

Average in India:
7 US-cents per kWh for electricty
(ranging from 0.1-18 US-cents per kWh for different states)

In Germany on the other hand it is much more expensive:
36.25 US-cents per kWh

and therefore such a process is more likely to be commercially interesting in a country like Germany, not in a country like India or Pakistan - until the electricity prizes also raise there.

The same applies to water, which is also a lot cheaper in most developing countries than in Germany.
Therefore, processes that are trying to save or recylce water or energy have a tough time to be commercially viable in most developing countries but are more interesting for some of the developed countries, like Germany.

It proves again the point that Giacomo and Rémi made abvoe: "the public sector needs to first create an environment for private parties to thrive" (and again it re-inforces my point that I made elsewhere, when we discussed forum categories, that governance and business belong together and not apart).


Kind regards,
Elisabeth

Dear Elisabeth,

The new edition of Sustainable Sanitation Practice, Issue 22 ( www.ecosan.at/ssp/issue-22-energy-heat-r...y/SSP-22_Jan2015.pdf ) is all about energy and wastewater treatment plants.

Smiles,

F H Mughal

Always astounding that poor and developing countries subsidise power on the name of the poor.

But by doing so, exclude the majority or large minority from having any access because they make investment non-viable!

Lets focus on making self-sufficiency and off grid village level options biable and available, so people in all circumstances can "cut the cord"

I think F H Mughal asked the right question - what is the cost. The energy production and clean water seem to me to be a bit irrelevant given that energy (and maybe water) will be used in the process.

It seems unlikely that more than a fraction of the energy use will be recovered from the steam and also unlikely that this alone will cover the financial costs of the enterprise. If water has been boiled as part of the process, it is no surprise that a byproduct is high quality potable water.

I would be curious to know under which circumstances this would be a viable alternative to existing sewage sludge treatment options.

I see that the claim is that the process will create more than the energy it needs. This seems unlikely.