Bill Gates drinks purified water from human waste in video, technology to be used in Senegal

Bill Gates has affirmed his commitment to issues such as sanitation in developing countries by drinking water from human waste and that was captured in a video. The technology was developed by a Seattle company called Janicki Bioenergy.

In talking about how this idea deals with sanitation, Bill Gates, in a blog post, writes, “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.”

By promoting this project, Gates intends to reinvent the toilet as we know since the by-products of human waste, using this technology, is usually electricity and clean water.

While the technology isn’t all that new, the method of purification quite obviously is as it convinced Bill Gates to drink the water in the video. Apart from this, what is clear is that the conventional process of distillation is used to separate the water.

The remaining sludge is then sent to a steam engine and which generates electricity for use.

Since this engineering firm is a part of the Bill Gates Foundation, they intend to launch this initiative in Senegal, which could prevent the deaths of a number of children that occur due to poor waste disposal.