It’s not often you see a group of highly accomplished scientists gathered excitedly around a toilet bowl. Unless that toilet bowl has the ability to turn human waste into electricity and fertilizers while consuming about 90 percent less water than the average loo.
Scientists from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have created what can only be called the most efficient and versatile toilet in the world. Dubbed the “No-Mix Vacuum Toilet,” the concept combines elements of both a urinal and airplane toilet to reduce water consumption and separate wastes so that valuable resources can be recovered from each.
Conventional toilets, even low-flow and dual-flush varieties, only provide one chamber in which to deposit waste. The No-Mix toilet instead offers two: the one for liquid waste resembles a urinal drain and only uses 0.05 gallons per flush (instead of 1-1.5 gallons), while the one for solid waste resembles a normal toilet chamber and uses vacuum suction technology (like that in a plane) to facilitate drainage. The researchers say that installing one of these toilets in an average public restroom, which sees about 100 flushes a day, could save about 42,267 gallons of water per year.
But saving water is only the beginning of what this amazing toilet can do!
The scientists imagine an elaborate plumbing system through which the No-Mix Vacuum Toilet will divert the liquid waste to a processing facility. There components used for fertilizers, such as nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, can be recovered and repurposed. Solid waste flushed down the N0-Mix toilet will be sent to a bioreactor where it will be digested and turned into biogas. The methane produced during this process can be used to replace natural gas used in stoves for cooking. Methane can also be converted to electricity if used to fuel power plants or fuel cells.
“The ultimate aim is not only for the new toilet system to save water, but to have a complete recovery of resources so that none will be wasted in resource-scarce Singapore,” said Associate Professor Wang Jing-Yuan, director of the Residues and Resource Reclamation Centre (R3C) at NTU, who is leading the research project.
The project has already received some funding, and NTU scientists are now looking to carry out trials by installing the toilet prototypes in two NTU restrooms. If successful, they say the public could pop a squat on the new toilet sometime in the next three years.
Main image credit: Nanyang Technological University/ScienceDaily
Secondary image credit: Yvonne Lehnhard/American Chemical Society