A team from the University of Toronto wiped out the competition in an international contest to design a new toilet, taking third place and scooping up $40,000.
Sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the challenge for the eight teams was to design a toilet that could run off the grid and be able to process human waste in 24 hours.
The Toronto Toilet runs on sustainable power, using a hand crank to process the solid waste, and sand along with a solar-powered UV light to disinfect the urine. The result is clean water and disinfected feces that could be used as fertilizer.
For Samuel Melamed, a recent mechanical engineering graduate from U of T, the project hit a personal note: He spent part of his childhood in Lagos, Nigeria, in an area with sewage problems.
“There would be a heavy rainfall and sewers would flood, and all of a sudden there would be really dirty, green, gross water flooding the streets,” he said. “I looked at (the challenge) and knew, as a mechanical engineer, I could do something about it. I could use some of my passion, my design skill, to reinvent the toilet.”
The new throne, initially funded by a $400,000 grant from the foundation, first separates urine and feces, then sends the latter through a series of conveyor belts that flatten and dry the poo to an easily combustible cake.
It’s delivered into a smouldering chamber where previously ignited matter will set the feces aflame and continue the combustion.
“Once it’s going it just keeps going,” said Prof. Yu-Ling Cheng, leader of the 14-person team. “We’ve done some experiments (on how) to absorb the emissions from the smouldering. We’re working on ways to capture the odour as well.”
The winning design at the Reinvent the Toilet fair, from Caltech, nabbed the $100,000 grand prize with a toilet that generates hydrogen and electricity from human waste.
The number two spot, with a $60,000 purse, was snagged by Loughborough University in England for a toilet that converts feces into biological charcoal and recovers minerals and clean water.
According to the foundation, 1.5 million children die each year from diseases related to food and water tainted with fecal matter, and about 2.5 billion people don’t have access to proper sanitation.
The U of T team has applied to the Gates Foundation to be part of phase two of the competition, where workable models of their toilet will be deployed into communities without sanitary facilities.