The longtime advocate of global access to clean water is backing a project that made a recent breakthrough: The Janicki OminiProcessor, a water purification system, turns poop into clean drinking water — and electricity.
The OmniProcessor filters the sewage-heavy drinking supply that poses enormous health risks to many impoverished communities, but also provides a clean source of energy. According to Janicki Bioenergy CEO Peter Janicki, the system first boils the raw sewage. The dried sludge is then thrown into a fire which creates steam that is converted into electricity. This electricity not only powers the OmniProcessor, but also gives enough runoff energy to power a town. The vapor from the sewage is processed through a system that leaves behind drinking water.
"The water tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle," Gates wrote in a blog post. "And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It’s that safe."
Water scarcity affects around 1.2 billion people, which is roughly 1/5th of the planet’s overall population. In addition to that, another 1.6 billion suffer from an economic water shortage, which means countries lack the infrastructure to supply water to their populations.
Many developing countries practice open defecation, which often contaminates the water supply. According to the World Health Organization, this can lead to diseases such as cholera, hepatitis A, dysentery, and Typhoid.
In fact one of the leading causes of death among children under five is diarrhea, often the result of unclean water or dehydration.
Gates and Janicki hope to introduce the system to many developing nations, since introducing Western latrine systems would be both complicated and expensive. Janicki’s projected next generation processor will produce 86,000 liters of water while also 250 kw of electricity per day.
