Yes, I know about Prof. Munshi's design.. I am form IITB

Yes a zero discharge toilet has been designed by Prof. Vinod Tare of IIT kanpur which looks exactly like Aquatron.. BUt the exact details of the deisgn are not known to me.. I was wondering if somebody could look at the design and tell me the difference between the two.

IIT B: www.ctechlab.com/pdf/Dry-San%20Toilet%20[CTech].pdf

IIT K: www.newsgram.com/how-zero-discharge-toil...ias-sanitation-woes/

Hi Sudheer,

You wrote that a Professor from IIT K has done it ..But I have come across reports in MidDay 4.10.2015 & NDTV about similar successful public biotoilet in operation for more than 3 Years which was developed by IIT B Prof Dr Kishor Munshi.

SMSharma

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Note by moderators: This post was made by a former user with the login name Gooddaysharma who is no longer a member of this discussion forum.

HI,
A similar model has been developed by An Indian Professor At IIT kanpur, Its called the zero discharge toilet.. looks the same as Aquatron to me.. Can anybody tell me if there is any difference other than the post-treatment method of solids and liquids after separation?

Hi Daniel,

Very interesting - and as a non-techie, Thammaratt's system does seem to be very similar, although maybe the thermophilic septic processing part is different?

Can you explain the volumes that can be processed - I see mention of 800 students and 4 units, so can obviously cope with 200 students per day, but what is the volume limit per unit per day?

On the cost side - it's EURO1,500 / USD$1,800 per toilet?

This for the cheapest system and goes up from there? www.aquatron.se/products/price-list/t

After 10,000 toilets and refinements and economies of scale, does it still need to be so expensive?

I know there are countless hours of r & d and cleverness and lots of money gone into it (and of course, the profits needed for more r & d etc and to reward you guys - and I am all for a profit - the more the merrier:), but it doesn't seem that there are any particularly expensive components that justify such a high commercial price?

Perhaps country pricing differentials are at play, but I am sure there would be manufacturing and distribution partners in Asia and Africa who, under your licence, can build and distribute systems cheaper, sell more and ensure that many more people get the benefit of your ideas and technology

Perhaps something to consider?

Dear Daniel,

Thanks for these explanations. Very interesting.
Could you also post some photos of these installations in Swedish schools? How many Swedish schools have these toilets and what is their motivation (are they perhaps in remote rural areas and not connected to a sewer system?)?

Are the school caretakers (janitors) or maintenance staff OK with dealing with the compost? That's very progressive! I don't know if German care takers could be convinced.

Do you have any photos of the maintenance tasks? Are there any requirements by the Swedish legislator to prove that the compost is safe enough to use in school gardens? Then again, only a few litres of compost per year from an entire school is not a lot.

And I think you missed this question of mine: Is the hydrocyclone separator patented by your company? (i.e. would someone like AIT not be allowed to also apply this design, too?)

Regards,
Elisabeth

P.S. I have alerted Thammarat to this thread by e-mail.
P.P.S. It might be a good idea to split off the last few posts and put them in a new thread?

Dear Elisabeth,

One of our retailers gave me this link to your forum.

The Aquatron separator was invented in Sweden by an engineer at IBM during the 80s, the first working systems were manufactured and installed in the beginning of the 90s.
In the end of the 90s there was a lot of big systems installed in public schools. The biggest one had 4 Aquatron systems that served 800 students, this system was up and running for over 15 years. With the Aquatron system the architect installed urine diverting toilets, the urine was collected in big tanks and local farmers used this for irrigation. Unfortunately, later on, more very young students (4-5 years old) was added to the school and the usage of the urine diverting toilets was too difficult to them. The direction of the school disconnected the toilets and the Aquatrons with them (even though they never had problems with the Aquatron systems)...
Today our best reference in Sweden is a school in Lund where 200 students use one Aquatron system since 1997.

Aquatron has changed owner and manufacturer during the years, and we estimate that over 10 000 systems been manufactured over the years (there is no record).

Our main sales is in Scandinavia, but we have clients all over Europe, Belize, USA, New Zealand, Australia and India. Of course we have some private persons that ordered systems and we don't know where in the world it's installed.

The cost on the Aquatron systems depends on the demands, but the prices estimated in Euros is from 1500€ and up included the composting chamber.

The maintenance cost is very low since most of our clients serve their own systems and the only part that needs to be maintained or served is the wire ring in the separator.
The schools only empty a few liter per year of compost.

Dear Christoph,

Thank you for your message. Yes, I think, this is, probably, the case of "2 thinkers, one thought."

Regards,

F H Mughal

Hi Mughal,
when daniel posted the video I remembered that I had a look at their page some years ago. They have quite a good description as well
www.aquatron.se/start/

Interesting solution. Seems to be the second time that a solution of reinvent the toilet is "reinvented". I don´t know if it is a copy or just "2 thinkers, one thought" as many times with good products.

Here is the picture of the product.



Yours
Christoph

Thanks, Elisabeth. You are right. Youtube is banned here, and so, I'll not be able to watch it.

Thank you for your help. I appreciate

Regards,

F H Mughal

Mughal, you have to click on the picture that Daniel provided above. It is a link to a Youtube video. But as you have told us in the past that Youtube is banned in Pakistan, I guess you cannot watch it. Therefore, I don't know how to help you (I know there are ways around that sort of ban, but one has to be quite an IT guru for that, I think, so I have no idea how it's done (something to do with modifying one's IP address), I also have no idea how risky it would be to try).