Bill Gates Provides an Update on the Omni Processor

Update on the Omni Processor, the machine that turns feces into water . The Janicki Omni Processor is in Dakar, Senegal, as part of a pilot project that could ultimately save lives and reduce disease in poor countries

When it was first revealed to the world, the OmniProcessor sat in an open lot in small-town Washington behind other Janicki buildings where workers built machine parts for aerospace, marine, space, and transportation operations. But once most of the kinks were worked out of the prototype—Gates personally inspected the machine late last year—the Janicki team wanted to see how the OmniProcessor worked for real. They took the machine apart and in February traveled to Dakar, Senegal, to rebuild the high-tech waste plant in the city to see if it could live up to its promise. By May, the OmniProcessor was up and running—and it turns out, as usual, that the real world isn’t as simple.

Garbage In, Water Out

So far, Gates says, the Janicki is working “as predicted,”though that doesn’t necessarily mean the test is going without a hitch.

“The real world introduces lots of variables,” Gates writes in a blog post . “For example, you have to find the right personnel to run the machine. You have to work with local and national governments and gauge the public’s reaction.”

Gates says the OmniProcessor team is thinking about how to tweak the OmniProcessor’s design and working out a business plan.

“The next version of the machine will burn most types of garbage in addition to human waste, and it will be easier to maintain,” Gates says. The Janicki team is looking to sell the first $1.5 million OmniProcessor unit to a Sengalese city and is in talks to sell other units to potential buyers in wealthier countries, too.

It’s tempting, Gates says, to focus on the flashier part of the OmniProcessor. Poop water that’s actually drinkable?!? But ultimately, the goal isn’t for the OmniProcessor to produce water, according to Gates. It’s to dramatically improve sanitation for cities in poor countries.

Affordable Sanitation

Today, at least 2 billion people still use toilet facilities that aren’t properly drained, and disease caused by poor sanitation kills 700,000 children a year. Rich-world solutions don’t work in developing countries, either—the infrastructure is too expensive. The whole point of the OmniProcessor, Gates says, is to make sanitation affordable for low-income communities.

In the city of Dakar alone, 1.2 million people aren’t connected to a sewage line. Instead, they have their own pits where people dump fecal waste. To deal with the waste, members of the community often empty the pits manually, filling buckets by hand and transferring sludge to holes in the ground that they’ve dug themselves. It’s a truly dangerous business—because of the rapid spread of pathogens, these people risk getting seriously ill from the work.

A better way to deal with the waste is to mechanically transfer fecal sludge via trucks and tubes to treatment plants. In Dakar, those plants have now been partially replaced by the OmniProcessor. According to Mbaye Mbéguéré, program coordinator at the National Institute of Sanitation, about one-third of the sludge in Dakar is now processed by these machines, turning human waste not only into drinkable water but producing electricity and ash for use in activities like construction.

Source: Wired

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Taxonomy

• Sludge Management
• Technology
• Water Management