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Bill gates drinks poo poo water.

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BramVD said:
I'm sorry but I've been hearing about these things for over 15 years or longer. They keep saying how this is possible and how it can save lives but nothing ever comes from it.
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It requires people in lower income countries to invest in infrastructure like this, that's the ever present problem. The blog specifically mentioned the challenges of previous philanthropic ventures like this, hopefully it's cheap enough now with a large enough ROI that something may actually come of it.
 
Sub Boss said:
That is actually interesting, i wonder how the cleaning process for the vapor works.
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They can have the Ganges river empty into a rendering plant that would directly into these machine. I imagine one day of flow from that river would power India for a decade :S
 
Loving all the great work Bill has been doing the past decade or so. So glad he's doing these amazing things and making the world a better place. If only the other multi-billionaires out there were more like him.
 
I would think about letting the steam cool back down into water vapor (and getting more drinkable water) rather than harnessing it for electricity, because fresh water is the real scarcity here.

But other than that this is pretty rad.
 
BramVD said:
I'm sorry but I've been hearing about these things for over 15 years or longer. They keep saying how this is possible and how it can save lives but nothing ever comes from it.
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en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWater

We have been drinking it for years.
 
I would think about letting the steam cool back down into water vapor and getting more ever-scarce drinkable water rather than producing excess electricity (are they really just letting steam drift out into the air??) but other than that this is pretty rad.
 
super-heated plasma said:
This would be huge in a place like India.
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they seem just fine

Luiow3m.jpg
 
This is cool, but a couple things immediately come to mind. Cost and maintenance (training people to maintain, availability of spare parts). More importantly though, there are people in developing countries who are unwilling to boil water for drinking to get rid of any pathogens that may be present. I've heard this first hand and people say things like, "It makes it taste weird," "It takes away the essence," and other things like that. I can imagine their reactions would be elevated by quite a few degrees if you gave them a glass of water and told them it started as waste that went through a machine. People in the developed world also balk at drinking treated waste water, even if they understand the process and know its safe. For a lot of people there's a disgust factor that cannot be overcome.

I do hope they can make something of this.
 
Syncytia said:
This is cool, but a couple things immediately come to mind. Cost and maintenance (training people to maintain, availability of spare parts). More importantly though, there are people in developing countries who are unwilling to boil water for drinking to get rid of any pathogens that may be present. I've heard this first hand and people say things like, "It makes it taste weird," "It takes away the essence," and other things like that. I can imagine their reactions would be elevated by quite a few degrees if you gave them a glass of water and told them it started as waste that went through a machine. People in the developed world also balk at drinking treated waste water, even if they understand the process and know its safe. For a lot of people there's a disgust factor that cannot be overcome.

I do hope they can make something of this.
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I doubt that the people who stand to benefit the most from this are the ones who will be having the deep philosophical debates.
 
Based chemical engineering. <3


Funny enough we all drink water purified from shit. You think the tap water you use didn't used to be toilet water? Haha.


Aztechnology said:
Didn't someone develop a bacteria that could turn solid waste, including feces into ethanol at some point as well?
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Yup
 
echoshifting said:
That is amazing. It's easy to crack jokes about "poo water" from our ivory water tower, but this could change lives for the better in a lot of places.

Holy shit, when did Bill Gates get old :(
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Yeah. I remember seeing him the the Seinfeld commercials like a few years ago. Now his face is super wrinkled
 
hipbabboom said:
I doubt that the people who stand to benefit the most from this are the ones who will be having the deep philosophical debates.
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Actually, they probably do. Diarrheal diseases are one of the leading causes in child death in developing countries, yet some people still do not want to boil water because they perceive boiling it as changing the water in a detrimental way. Perception is everything. Take mosquito nets for example, it isn't uncommon to hear someone complain that "It gets too hot," or "blocks the breeze" so they don't use a mosquito net even when they know it will help protect them from malaria.

I think this is a great machine and if it can be implemented and used, that's awesome. But just because someone makes something like this doesn't mean you can just go set it up somewhere and expect miracles to happen.
 
This is the third misleading thread title I've clicked in the past 5 minutes.

Sorry, Bill Gates isn't as adorable as that child predator in the other thread.
 
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