The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded a project by Manchester University researcher Sarah Haigh with the end goal of making toilet water safe to drink, as well as being able to have energy extracted from it. Don’t tell your dog just yet, but Patches may have some high quality water to sneak from the bathroom when you aren’t looking sometime in the future.
The crux of Haigh’s project hangs on the theory that a scaffold-like structure that contains a mixture of bacteria and metal nano-particles will react with used toilet water in such a way where it will extract hydrogen and filter the remaining water to produce clean water. Haigh was given $100,000 from the Gates Foundation as initial funding for the project, as one might expect a clean water and fuel-producing system that can be rigged up to a household toilet would. However, the toilet-based buck doesn’t stop there. If Haigh and her team can create the chemical reactions they described that initially won the $100,000, they could receive a cool one million from the Gates Foundation to further the project.
Haigh notes that if successful, the technology will be particularly important in developing and impoverished countries, where it can reduce pollution and lower the cost of waste disposal — a result that’ll be useful just about anywhere humans create a certain type of waste. As previously noted, the project hasn’t produced a successful end result as of yet, but the end goal is certainly promising.
(via Daily Mail)
- Bill Gates has been focusing on toilets lately
- No, we’re not talking about Windows 8. Good job, though
- Windows 8 finally stopped marginalizing England
