The University of Colorado Boulder has developed a solar-powered toilet to help some of the 2.5 billion people who lack safe and sustainable sanitation.
The university team received a $777,000 grant in 2012 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation towards the creation of the self-contained, waterless toilet, which heats human waste to a high enough temperature to sterilise it and create bio-char, a highly porous charcoal that can be used to both increase crop yields and capture CO2.
The project is part of the Gates Foundation’s Reinvent the Toilet challenge — an effort to develop a toilet that can disinfect liquid and solid waste while generating a useful end product. Since the 2012 grant, the university team has received another $1 million from the Gates Foundation for the project.
The current toilet has been created to serve four to six people a day, but a larger facility that could serve several households is under design.
Team member Elizabeth Travis, who is working toward a master’s degree in engineering, said: “It is a really cool research project, and we have a great team. Everyone is very creative, patient and supportive, and there is a lot of innovation. It is exciting to learn from all of the team members.”