Last update March 19, 2023 at 05:55 am
The foundation Bill & melinda invested in a recyclable toilet project. The product that came out of it did a lot more than expected. It is called Omniprocessor.
On November 15, we will be 8 billion in the world in 2022 according to the UN. In Africa Above all, more than half of the world's demographic growth will be here by 2050 according to the United Nations.
What do all these numbers actually mean? This means that we will be more and more numerous per km².
This increase in population density leads to a number of known health problems that come up time and time again. These problems are most often problems of managing defections and access to drinking water.
The solutions to these problems depend specifically on the standard of living and the environment in which one finds oneself. The solutions applied in Europe, the United States and everywhere else are rarely identical and cannot be applied everywhere in Africa.
To solve these problems, the Bill & Melinda Foundation considered a recyclable toilet investment project. What came out of it is a machine that does more than expected. The machine in question is the omniprocessor.
The Omniprocessor is a machine that allows human waste to be transformed into electrical energy, drinking water and manure.
At first we thought of a sort of recyclable toilet that we could install in the premises, but in the end it became a project that makes it possible to solve the management of defections for an entire community and even a city.
In this post we will talk in detail about the operation of this machine and its current use.
How does an Omniprocessor work?
Bill Gates Microsoft co-founder promotes the Omniprocessor, a machine designed and created by the company Janicki Bioenergy (became sedron ) to extract drinking water from human excrement.
To extract potable water, the Omniprocessor boils the organic waste and recovers the steam which it condenses through the distillation process.
You may be wondering what we do with the rest of our waste, deprived of water. This machine rejects them in a furnace which will consume them until they become ashes.
The released gas is reused to produce electricity for the Omniprocessor, the excess energy produced is released to the public grid.
The Omniprocessor is basically a self-contained machine designed for countries that can't afford to run sewer systems.
Also in the documentary video Inside bill gates brains , it has been demonstrated that the population density of certain countries is so high that the health systems of the West would be ineffective in the long term.
If human excrement are the entrances to the machine, from the latter comes drinking water, electricity and ashes which can be used as manure. See the video above.
The s100 model of the machine can produce up to 10,800 liters of drinking water per day, this same quantity can satisfy the entire population of the United States of America with their water consuming equipment. This same model is already on its way to Dakar in Senegal.
Last year the Omniprocessor model s200 arrived in Senegal:
Great news: the S200 (or “V2”) Janicki Omni Processor has arrived in Senegal! Here's a photo of the assembly team—featuring members of the Sedron team along with our colleagues at Senegal's Delvic Sanitation Initiatives and China's CRRC—discussing the assembly and safety plans. pic.twitter.com/LqL7XxdmTJ
—Sedron Technologies (@sedrontech) May 21, 2021
The advantages of the Omniprocessor
The following video shows parts that I wouldn't recommend seeing if you're eating.
It's not horrible huh, it's just that there are things that are not pretty to see. Don't tell me you haven't been warned.
In the video below we discover how Senegalese society (especially Dakar) was without the Omniprocessor machine. We were talking about how human waste was managed before.
Then in the video, they talked about the benefits and changes this machine has brought to their daily life.
A little context
Most large African cities still have a part of the population who do not have access to the drinking water and sewage network.
These are often suburbs and settlements that have been created over time. In these places, the emptying of the toilets is not always done in the right way. Draining is often done in two ways:
- Manual emptying where for the occupants of the house are responsible for emptying their latrine themselves and burying it. Problem, they are likely to contract diseases and create an epidemic.
- The use of emptying trucks where professionals are called upon to empty their latrines using appropriate equipment. These trucks then leave to treat the waste at the centres. In the majority of cases, the treatment of waste does not completely destroy the bacteria and parasites that have formed there… It is still much better than the first method.
In both cases the waste even expelled is still dangerous and full of pests and diseases. The third or complementary solution would be the destruction of waste by the Omniprocessor.
Advantage of using the Omniprocessor
The benefits of the Omniprocessor are found a lot in the treatment of waste. The following points show the advantages of this machine when it is used.
- The destruction of waste at high temperature makes it possible to destroy all that is parasitic microbes that generate epidemics.
- During waste treatment, water vapor is distilled to be transformed into drinkable portable water.
- The energy produced in the combustion of human waste is converted into electrical energy which will feed the machine and be distributed to the city or locality.
- Now the powder that comes out as a residue of this treatment can be used as:
- Manure,
- Earth to make bricks
The use of this last waste is very varied and open to the imagination of those who have it.
At the end of the video, entrepreneurs are invited to take an interest in innovation in the health sector, which is a problem that will keep coming up all over the world. We have talked a lot about the advantages of this installation, what about the disadvantages?
The disadvantages of the Omniprocessor
For all good things, there are always advantages and disadvantages. For this machine I searched a lot on the web and I found very few resources talking about the shortcomings of the Omniprocessor machine.
In my opinion, I would have liked a miniature version of this machine for installations at home, in cities or in the countryside. This will save energy and water consumption in isolated places. Maybe such a project is underway in the premises of Sedron… who knows? One of the first disadvantage of this machine is:
The cost
It takes nearly $ 1.5 million or nearly 1 billion CFA francs to install an Omniprocessor factory while it takes several to maintain a very dense city. In any case for all that it brings as an advantage the price can be worth it.
It is also not the kind of device you can install at home like a generator in your house.
The idea of drinking water from poo
It may be said vulgarly but it must be as precise as possible. Not everyone is open-minded enough to accept the idea of drinking water made from human and animal faeces. The energy renewal project is beautiful and promising but… still.
Company that manufactures the Omniprocessor
This project is one of the projects supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which consists in supporting innovative projects in the field of health and knowledge. To know everything about the machine you can visit the site sedron.com . Bless you.
Conclusion
As a reminder of the titles, here is what we saw:
- How does an Omniprocessor work?
- The advantages brought by the Omniprocessor
- The disadvantages of the Omniprocessor
- Company that manufactures the Omniprocessor
We have seen that an Omniprocessor is a machine that can transform human waste into electrical energy, drinking water and manure.
Omniprocessors have several advantages as well as disadvantages. This system is one of the machines you need to have to solve the sanitary problems that arise when a city is too dense.
Sources
https://www.aa.com.tr/fr/monde/la-population-mondiale-devrait-atteindre-les-8-milliards-en-novembre-2022-rapport-de-lonu/2635441
https://www.un.org/fr/global-issues/population
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Omni-Processor-Update
