This Ingenious Machine Turns Feces Into Drinking Water

I watched the piles of feces go up the conveyer belt and drop into a large bin. They made their way through the machine, getting boiled and treated. A few minutes later I took a long taste of the end result: a glass of delicious drinking water.
The occasion was a tour of a facility that burns human waste and produces water and electricity (plus a little ash). I have visited lots of similar sites, like power plants and paper mills, so when I heard about this one—it’s part of the Gates Foundation’s effort to improve sanitation in poor countries—I was eager to check it out.
The water tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle. And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It’s that safe.


http://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Omniprocessor-From-Poop-to-Potable

advertising hype or what
having been processed to hell and judging by its source (faeces) it is likely that the water will effectively be distilled water.

distilled water is, by its very nature utterly devoid of taste..so how can it be "delicious"

How do you figure that based off no evidence and just an assumption?

go think about it....

its not difficult you know

boil the faeces...collect the water that comes off as steam

(thats distilled water)

re boil it (for purity)
and finally add a bit of chloramine T or silver colloid to ensure sterility....

I dont need to collect 6 A4 dossiers of evidence before commenting on something as basic science as this.

jeepers I do something like this when I go to my other abode away from so called civilisation...

filter...boil ....collect steam.....add silver colloid...

pure (but tasteless) drinking water

Assumption again.
Do you know how they have done this?

No, you are again just assuming, based off your own views.

well lets just say....simplicity and economics.....
any other way would be less economical and "guilding the lily"

Again unless you have seen the workings of this, it is a tad premature to say what it can do.

ok oh all knowing one...its a time machine as well
and as an aside it can wash yer knickers too

There is no need for immature insults, I have no idea if this works either not even my subject, just an interest, (sigh)

darknessss wrote:advertising hype or what
having been processed to hell and judging by its source (faeces) it is likely that the water will effectively be distilled water.

distilled water is, by its very nature utterly devoid of taste..so how can it be "delicious"

to be fair it is probably as delicious as bottled water,  and some may be personal preference, distilled water still tastes different from air some may consider it's very mild bland flavour delicious (and water tastes sweet when you have Drunk WAY too much coffee       )

"The water tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle"

veya_victaous wrote:

darknessss wrote:advertising hype or what
having been processed to hell and judging by its source (faeces) it is likely that the water will effectively be distilled water.

distilled water is, by its very nature utterly devoid of taste..so how can it be "delicious"

to be fair it is probably as delicious as bottled water,  and some may be personal preference, distilled water still tastes different from air some may consider it's very mild bland flavour delicious (and water tastes sweet when you have Drunk WAY too much coffee       )

"The water tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle"

water tastes sweet when you are dehydrated (which is why it tastes such after too much coffe...caffeine is a diuretic dontcha know)
also have you noticed when you have been sweating a lot and are a bit short on salt that also tastes oddly sweet??

darknessss wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:

darknessss wrote:advertising hype or what
having been processed to hell and judging by its source (faeces) it is likely that the water will effectively be distilled water.

distilled water is, by its very nature utterly devoid of taste..so how can it be "delicious"

to be fair it is probably as delicious as bottled water,  and some may be personal preference, distilled water still tastes different from air some may consider it's very mild bland flavour delicious (and water tastes sweet when you have Drunk WAY too much coffee       )

"The water tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle"

water tastes sweet when you are dehydrated (which is why it tastes such after too much coffe...caffeine is a diuretic dontcha know)
also have you noticed when you have been sweating a lot and are a bit short on salt that also tastes oddly sweet??

yeah, it is the way i judge that i have drunk too much coffee stupid drinks that make you thirsty

     ALL distillation, desalination and heavy filtration systems operating on a 'municipal scale' are inherently so expensive to set up, and troublesome/complex to run and maintain, that they are only feasible wherever there are sufficient sources of wealth nearby (e.g. mining; oil and gas; large industrial estates, booming cities..), or an external "wealthy benefactor" (e.g. charities, 'richer' foreign countries, military bases, disaster relief agencies, "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation") as to subsidise and underwrite those installations, and thereby making them more viable...

THAT'S WHY we might see such industrial scale water purification plants operating in places such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Dubai, Oman, Hong Kong, Singapore, Perth, Adelaide, parts of Mexico, and some of the drier desert states and remote military bases, industrial parks and mining sites in the USA ~ but not so much where many people might consider that they should be considered equally essential, places such as western and equatoriai Africa (e.g. Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda..), or in many locations where many indigenous populations still live in "Third World" conditions (e.g. rural backblocks of Indonesia, Northern India, China, central and South Americas, heavily polluted parts of S.E. Asia and around the Pacific Rim..).

IN MANY of these areas, it is much more viable to resort to such "old school" low tech' (but also lower cost and more reliable) methods such as protected and secured water supplies (e.g. dams, springs and wells..), simpler filter systems, and especially controlling and enforcing environmental and resource protection regulations and conditions over those competing neighbouring exploitive industries (i.e. mining, export-oriented agri-business, tourism resorts, forestry..) responsible for wrecking and endangering local water supplies.      

an interesting point mr Wolf......

MOST industrial concerns benefit from economy of scale, it it does seem that perversely enough water productio works backwards

It is VERY cheap and simple to provide small quantities of potable water from even the foulest of sources, with very little in the way of capital costs...but scale it up to as you put it municiple levels and it becomes mind bogglingly expensive.

I can only assume that that is due to the energy cost of distributing such vast amounts, pumping millions of gallons of water cant be cheap?