An ecological toilet to produce energy and much more
It is nothing new that animal droppings are worth money. With them, you can do many things; from producing renewable energy to the precious compost, manure, used by farmers.
Although there are many companies that have great economic benefits with the blessed "shit". Moving that concept to a more earthly world, at street level, is complicated.
This is where a fascinating project called Feces Standard Money (FSM). Something like "Money for feces." The concept, is turn human feces into next-generation biofuel, and, to produce that energy, you get paid somehow.
To materialize this idea. Cho Jae-weon, professor of environmental engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea, has devised a eco-friendly toilet that rewards people who use it with their own cryptocurrency, call Ggool.
According to the project engineer… »an average person defecates around 500 grams a day, which can be converted into 50 liters of methane gas. This produces 0.5kWh of electricity, which is enough to run a dishwasher load in economy mode or used to drive a car for about 1.2 km, for example.
Going further, the college, has launched some bathrooms with these new ecological toilets. And you know what! Well the students love the idea.
And yes, you got it right. At a South Korean university, student “poop” is used to produce energy that is later reused at the university itself. Thanks to that energy saving by using less electricity, they reward students with a digital currency that they can change.
For using the ecological toilet that produces energy, they pay you with a cryptocurrency thanks to the energy savings it represents for the University
They pay students with a cryptocurrency called Ggool, "Honey" in Korean. Students earn 10 Ggool a day for their "contributions" to the toilet and these digital currencies can be exchanged for books, food, cups of coffee, etc. in campus cafeterias.
This smart toilet system is the latest version of an earlier energy-producing, waterless toilet system 'BeeVi Toilet', created as part of the Science Walden project.
The heart of this project is the Feces Standard Money (FSM). The latest version of the BeeVi toilet, it is WALDEN 2.0. It even has a integrated health screening system which can be used to analyze urine and other waste, and inform users of its current status via a smartphone app.
The ecological toilet It has a structure that can aspirate the feces and send it directly to the energy production system. For it, You only need about 0.5 liters of water, which is much less water than traditional toilets use A super water saver!
The system uses the vacuum pump to extract the feces to an underground tank. Food waste produced in the kitchen of a university restaurant is also stored in an underground tank with faeces.
Later, they are transformed into biogas (See article on bioenergy), composed of methane gas and carbon dioxide by microorganisms. Biogas is refined and used as fuel for gas cookers or boilers.
In short, all advantages for the environment. It is about creating a monetary system based on the value of the feces produced by people, which produces energy or compost, instead of polluting. Think about how a new idea can produce changes beyond the scientific, technological or engineering project to turn feces into energy or compost.
If you liked the article, rate and share!
