[HN Gopher] Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university trans...
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Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human
waste into biogas
Author : anw
Score : 56 points
Date : 2021-07-25 05:21 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| Holy shit... By the way, there's a weird-ass Korean adult
| animation about a dystopian world that has (tried to) solve their
| energy crisis by burning human feces.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aachi_%26_Ssipak
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0972542/
|
| Maybe those researchers have been inspired from that movie. Ah,
| how life imitates art...
|
| The plot (highly NSFW by the way):
|
| "Somewhere in the future, mankind has depleted all energy and
| fuel sources, however they have somehow engineered a way to use
| human excrement as fuel. To reward production, the government
| hands out extremely addictive, popsicle-like "Juicybars" to
| citizens, which in turn also makes them constipated. Aachi and
| Ssipak are street hoodlums who struggle to survive by trading
| black market Juicybars. Through a chain of events involving their
| porn-director acquaintance Jimmy the Freak, they meet a porn star
| named Beautiful, who gets a pink ring inside her butt which makes
| her defecations rewarded by exceptional quantities of Juicybars.
| For that reason, Beautiful is also wanted by the violent blue
| mutants known as the Diaper Gang (led by the Diaper King), the
| police (most notably the cyborg police officer Geko), and
| others."
| Lio wrote:
| Mad Max III also described a post apocalyptic world powered by
| methane made from pig shit.
|
| So it seems like a commonish theme.
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| Although the comment was written as a half-joke, it's an
| incredibly obtuse and specific South Korean reference that
| others might not know, and I thought it would be fun to post
| about it.
| Lio wrote:
| Yep definitely. I appreciated it and didn't know it
| previously. So cheers.
| supperburg wrote:
| I'm convinced that the solution is a system that uses a long
| tubular plastic liner that continuously renews the surface of the
| bowl between uses and simultaneously traps the session products
| in a sealed bag via thermo sealing.
|
| Why do it this way? Uses no water while not allowing the
| accumulation of smelly material. But why seal the product into
| bags?
|
| The waste needs to be disinfected before it can be disposed of in
| a casual manner. And ideally the smell should be neutralized. I
| think the best way to do this is by heating it up. Incinerating
| your poop every time you poop is too energy intensive. Instead,
| you can save up the bags and then burn them in large batches. Or
| send them off to be processed elsewhere.
| tdeck wrote:
| Sounds like the loowatt system:
| https://www.loowatt.com/toilets.html
| decebalus1 wrote:
| I don't get the novelty. My uncle used to work in Sweden on a
| project similar to this in the 80s.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Don't mean to shit on it, butT central waste water treatment
| plants also do this. At least some. So I don't really get the
| novelty of it?
| jalk wrote:
| In Copenhagen, 30-50% of the gas in the consumer network is
| produced like this.
| dandanua wrote:
| The novelty is that they want to use feces as a universal
| currency. This idea is very precious indeed, if you look close
| enough.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| What happens to the leftover content after the methane is
| extracted?
|
| Can it be used as a manure or is it safe to be dumped underground
| or in rivers?
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| >Can it be used as a manure or is it safe to be dumped
| underground or in rivers?
|
| Absolutely! A danger of human waste is that it carries a lot of
| pathogens that might be benign or beneficial in the lower
| intestine of one person but cause disease in the stomach of
| another, but the solution to that problem is to let it
| ferment/decompose for a bit and let all the bacteria kill
| themselves off through starvation and cooking in their own
| metabolic heat, and during that process is when you collect the
| methane. You'll often see large piles of cow manure composting
| in big piles for similar reasons, though the methane isn't
| always captured.
|
| The danger to dumping any kind of waste into a river, treated
| or not, is that it will start killing anything that finds it
| toxic (most likely your fish and amphibians) and feed anything
| that finds it nutritious (algae, bacteria), which can cause
| ecological imbalances and generally screw up your ecosystem.
| For an adjacent example, look at the Gulf dead zone caused by
| fertilizer runoff from the American corn belt: Fertilizer feeds
| algae, which then chokes out other plants fish need to survive
| and absorb oxygen when the algae dies off, leaving a large
| swath of ocean without fish or anything that relies on fish.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| Excellent manure, feedstock for compost. Still too toxic for
| dumping into rivers.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| https://humanurehandbook.com/
| mikro2nd wrote:
| Deeply familiar with it :) and the Humanure Book goes on
| _at length_ about how to compost the shit and make very
| sure it is safe to use. The solids that come out of a
| methane digester _must_ be composted to render them safe.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I'm pretty there are all sort of health issues in using human
| sewage as compost. Look at North Korea for an example of that.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| North Korea is also terrible example about having government
| at all.
|
| IIRC the problem was that they were using improperly treated
| waste.
| pkphilip wrote:
| There are already ways of converting human waste into
| protein. 100kgs of human waste can be converted into 40kgs of
| protein.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinero/2019/07/06/from-
| fec...
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Yummie Brownies!
| hulitu wrote:
| I would like to look. Do you have some links ?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| As far as I understand they have a shortage of everything,
| including livestock, so they end up using human feces as
| compost. This becomes a disease vector and you end up with
| ground water and vegetables contaminated with all sorts of
| parasites. This is specially critical for children because
| intestinal worms effectively hijack what little nutrients
| they can eat, creating even more malnourishment. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-unicef-
| idUSKBN...
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| I keep expecting to see squat toilets. Especially for public
| facilities. Nothing to break. Use power washer to clean. Doubles
| as a floor drain.
|
| I'd use a squat toilet in my house if it had some kind of air
| lock. Maybe like the Tidy Diaper Pail.
| https://www.walmart.com/ip/Tidy-Diaper-Pail-Pearl/900658925 Pure
| frikkin genius.
| kmarc wrote:
| What a "shitty" topic to talk about, shall we?
|
| I am happy to see a growing number of headlines about
| "rethinking" human waste management at any scale. Flushing
| toilets with potable water seems just very wrong, and a luxury I
| always thought western societies can afford only.*
|
| The system that the article describes is a funny one, or at least
| is sold with humor ("get paid as you poop"). Apart from the
| technology itself, I think a good amount of being easygoing on
| the topic is important here: as how sex sells clothing, fart
| jokes sell novel feces-recycling systems!
|
| Another example (no affiliation) is Kompotoi here in Switzerland:
|
| https://www.kompotoi.ch/ (English available)
|
| I was honored to do a particular type of business on these $5.000
| toilets in the Swiss alps at 6.500ft, and admittedly felt like a
| king sitting on the throne of recycling!
|
| Bottom line: drinkingwater-flushed toilets are not sustainable,
| nor accessible/affordable for the majority of the world, so let's
| stop being ignorant and seek for solutions.
|
| Happy pooping!
|
| * disclaimer: I grew up in Eastern European countryside, with no
| daily access to water flush toilets until I was around 8yo
| windoze123 wrote:
| Speaking of eastern europe, here is some anecdata. There are
| villages and towns in Romania that received EU funding for
| water and waste treatment. Naturally money have been embezzled
| and instead what they got was "drinking" water with traces of
| fecal matter (bacteria and the resulting chemicals). When
| confronted about it, the locals (not even those responsible for
| the issue), said that the water tastes real good and are
| "proud" of what their mayors did to the water system. They even
| said its healthier than city water because it's "eco" and has
| less chemicals. No less than 892 communes benefit from the
| blessing of "real good" water (a commune usually covers a few
| villages, so you can imagine the scale of the issue). And yes,
| they voted the same people back in and are staunch defenders of
| their "performance".
|
| Source (in Romanian, published by an investigative reporter):
| https://recorder.ro/harta-apei-contaminate-din-satele-romani...
| kmarc wrote:
| Hi there; although I can relate the (corruption-induced)
| negligent use of EU-money in Eastern Europe, as the
| guidelines [1] instruct, please avoid unrelated controversies
| and generic tangents while commenting.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| foreigner wrote:
| I used a toilet once that was connected directly to the sink
| next to it. The sink had a faucet but no controls. When you
| flushed the toilet the water started coming out of the faucet
| in the sink so you could wash your hands, and then was routed
| from the sink's drain directly to refill the toilet's tank for
| the next flush. When the tank was full the sink shut off
| automatically.
|
| It was genius! So simple and cheap yet effective. An
| interesting side effect is that after you flush the toilet the
| sink's faucet runs for quite a long time, which really makes
| you appreciate how much water is going in to each flush. Why
| don't all toilets work that way?
| leipert wrote:
| Pretty common in Japan, if I recall correctly.
| cbmuser wrote:
| Yep, used these myself multiple times.
| voisin wrote:
| This sounds amazing. Was it just a proof of concept or an
| actual marketed product installed somewhere? Commercial or
| residential setting?
| jaclaz wrote:
| Something along this approach has been used in "modern"
| house hydraulics in the last few years here in Italy,
| though not common, as it is used only AFAIK in self
| standing houses (not apartments buildings).
|
| In practice there is a reservoir where the "almost clean"
| waste water (i.e. what comes out of the bath sink, bidet
| and shower/bath tub) is accumulated.
|
| Toilets are fed by a pump with water coming from this
| reservoir, in practice you use the same water two times.
| foreigner wrote:
| It was at a place called Cypress Valley outside of Austin,
| TX. https://www.cypressvalley.com
|
| Note this was many years ago...
| sensitive-ears wrote:
| There are plenty of places around the world with western style
| toilets but flushed with rainwater or recycled washing
| machine/shower water instead. That seems like a fairly
| sustainable solution that already works?
| kmarc wrote:
| Yes, those are better solutions, however still not really
| sustainable, and without incentives to build the accompanied
| infrastructure, it's never going to be sustainable; whereas
| solutions like the composting toilets are fairly easy to
| implement - FWIW ~ that's what we had before water flush
| toilets, isn't it?
| cbmuser wrote:
| They have used human feces in North Korea to fertilize their
| fields with the effect that people got worm parasites:
|
| > https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/16/body-of-north-korean-
| defecto...
|
| Also, human feces can contain anti-biotics and other stuff that
| you shouldn't be spreading over soil. There is a reason why
| hospital waste water gets special treatment before disposed of
| into the sewers.
|
| I don't think using human feces as fertilizers is a good idea.
| jhbadger wrote:
| When my father was stationed (in the US Army) in South Korea
| in the early 1960s, human "nightsoil" was the primary
| fertilizer there as well. It's an obvious source of cheap
| fertilizer, even if it has some health drawbacks. Obviously
| the economic success of the South has allowed it to not do
| that anymore.
| kmarc wrote:
| It is, at least where I am coming from, well-known that raw
| human feces must not be used for fertilizing soil; However,
| composted (long enough / on high temperature) would break
| down the pathogens that are bad for humans.
|
| See more on wikipedia about fertilization using human feces
| [1] and in general, applications of composting toilets [2].
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_feces#Use_as_fertilizer
|
| [2]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting_toilet#Applications
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Flushing toilets with potable water seems just very wrong,
| and a luxury I always thought western societies can afford
| only.
|
| I assume the cost and potentially even environmental impact of
| reusing existing potable water infrastructure to provide water
| for toilet-flushing is much less than manufacturing, installing
| & maintaining separate local systems (to collect rainwater,
| etc) for this purpose.
| kmarc wrote:
| You are absolutely right, however, as ben_w below also
| pointed out, while the economical / environmental impact
| might not be justifiable in our western bubble, it might be
| outside of it.
|
| There are still places on this planet where clean drinking
| water is a scarcity, and therefore - along multiple other
| reasons - water-flush toilets and accompanying infrastructure
| cannot be (easily / justifiably) built.
|
| However, as we can see there are different solutions to the
| problem itself (health-risk free, humanic way of taking a
| dump) without using up gallons of water.
| macksd wrote:
| My house has a non-potable water supply used for irrigation,
| and is in fact required by the town to. I know the same is
| true in some parts of Utah and probably other places. In such
| cases, also requiring toilets to be supplied by the non-pot
| line would be a trivial cost that would pay for itself
| eventually.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If you've already got it then it makes sense to use it, but
| this doesn't remove the cost of building and maintaining
| separate infrastructure at all.
|
| In some cases it might be worth it or necessary, in others
| I think the process of processing & delivering potable
| water could be made (or is already) so efficient that
| building & maintaining separate infrastructure for non-
| potable water would be a net negative both in terms of cost
| and environmental impact.
| ben_w wrote:
| Depends how much water costs; in the UK water is cheap
| compared to the cost of a plumber, but the UK is famously
| moist. I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of more arid
| environments would find the cost going the other way, and
| preferring some combination of rainwater collection,
| greywater reuse, or non-water-based toilets.
| xor99 wrote:
| Urine powered phones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LTprRQTKAw
|
| MFCs (Microbial fuel cells) are waiting to feast on all manner of
| horrible stuff and produce energy. I'm not sure where economic
| incentives for peeing and pooing would go long term though.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| The headline is an euphemism of the year!
| dandanua wrote:
| Meanwhile, there is a "War on Poop" in North Korea
| https://youtu.be/8yqa-SdJtT4?t=1898
| angus-prune wrote:
| Methane from sewage was used in London gas lamps since the 1890s
| when the Webb Sewer gas lamp was invented.
| [https://nikmorton.webs.com/webbgaslamps.htm]
|
| The most famous surviving example is next to The Savoy hotel on
| The Strand [https://www.historic-
| uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/F...]
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