Microsoft founder and billionaire Gates posted a link to his Facebook page on Jan. 6 that showed him drinking water distilled from a Janicki Omniprocessor, which burns solid-ish human sewage that looks sort of like soil.
The machine produces ash and steam, and the steam is distilled into water, which comes out the end of the machine; in this case, straight into a glass that Gates drinks on camera and appears to survive.
That’s right. What sounds like a crappy idea (quite literally) is a new project Bill Gates has invested in with hopes the project can be employed in developing countries. By creating a sanitary and fresh water supply while also eliminating waste, the project is viable for areas that do not have developed sanitation systems.
However, the video seemed a little too good to be true, so we talked to an engineer and a wastewater practice leader with Advanced Engineering and Environmental Services Inc., a civil/environmental consulting engineering firm with offices in North Dakota.
Shawn Gaddie and Scott Schaefer explained Gates’ burned sewage water and how wastewater is treated in Grand Forks, and whether we could drink our own wastewater in America (hint: it’s possible).
The technology exists to treat and drink wastewater, we just don’t want to
While Gates showed that it’s entirely possible to quench your thirst with water from -- well, you know -- the two biggest obstacles to actually doing so are a lack of regulations and what Gaddie referred to as a “toilet-to-tap” stigma.
“The regulations aren’t in place in the U.S. to drink it,” Gaddie said, adding that changing regulations would be a lengthy process, even without the natural aversion to the idea of drinking treated wastewater.
“It’s still a big hurdle to overcome,” he said.
Schaefer jokingly pointed to Gates’ facial expression in the video as proof.
“He had an interesting look on his face,” Schaefer said, laughing. “It was kind of like, ‘It wasn’t that bad and yeah I actually did it.’”
However, knowing the technology, both Schaefer and Gaddie said they would try the water under certain conditions.
The Bill Gates video is skipping a few steps
To the untrained eye, Gates’ video seems to suggest the machine takes in the solid waste from our sewers, burns it and distills water out of the steam.
But Schaefer points out the process, while innovative and energy positive, is only dealing with the solid side of the wastewater stream. The liquid has already been removed at this point.
And of this solid matter, Gaddie said the sludge being burned only represents about 4 percent of the original total solids in the waste product.
Here’s what would have to happen to the original product to get from, as Gaddie put it, “gross” to “less gross,” in Grand Forks’ wastewater treatment plant.
The first step involves removing both heavier solids and smaller solids. The larger solids are removed by “strainers” that look like a conveyor belt of cheese graters, and the end product looks like the dryer lint for a family of bison mixed with the hygiene products that people flush.
After that, a swirling vortex chamber eliminates smaller solids that resemble coffee grains the size of dimes.
From here, wastewater is piped to one of three domed aerobic reactors. Large amounts of oxygen combine with a large mass of microorganisms to eat away at the dissolved solids.
Finally, the water is piped to 30-foot deep tanks where air bubbles lift remaining biology to the surface. A rake mechanism moves in the opposite direction of water flow, which allows the remaining biology to be scraped off the top.
In Grand Forks, the final skimmed product is either piped back into reactors to feed the microbiology or disposed of in landfills. In the video, this is what gets incinerated to produce ash and the steam from which Gates’ water was distilled.
Wastewater is often reused in the U.S., but not for drinking
While regulations don’t exist in the U.S. to direct our treated wastewater back into our drinking taps, it is often treated and repurposed, especially in arid regions of the country.
Schaefer has worked in arid regions of Arizona where treated wastewater is repurposed to irrigate the turf of golf courses.
In areas of the country suffering from severe droughts, however, cities have come closer to direct reuse. Schaefer said areas in Orange County, Calif., have done a lot of ground water recharging with treated wastewater, which helps alleviate drought conditions without directly piping treated wastewater into the potable water supply.
Grand Forks is moving toward reusing wastewater
Reuse is also growing more common in North Dakota. In Fargo, treated wastewater is supplied to Tharaldson Ethanol for reuse, which prevents depletion of ground or surface water supplies normally used for drinking water.
Schaefer said reuse for irrigation is also common on the west side of the state.
In Grand Forks, there are plans for treated wastewater from the city’s lagoons to be sent to the Northern Plains Nitrogen fertilizer plant for reuse.
Gaddie said NPN uses polymer filters, which use pressure and extremely small openings in polymer cloth to filter out everything except water molecules. This water can be used for coolant systems and other parts of the plant, which could reduce the footprint of Grand Forks’ approximately 1,400 acres of wastewater lagoons by a third.
©2015 the Grand Forks Herald (Grand Forks, N.D.)
