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Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

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Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#21

Post by leipert »

foreigner wrote: post #11
kmarc wrote: post #3

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 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 e…

Pretty common in Japan, if I recall correctly.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#22

Post by lasagnaphil »

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."

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#23

Post by jaclaz »

voisin wrote: post #17
foreigner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

This sounds amazing. Was it just a proof of concept or an actual marketed product installed somewhere? Commercial or residential setting?

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.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#24

Post by Lio »

lasagnaphil wrote: post #22

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 al…

Mad Max III also described a post apocalyptic world powered by methane made from pig shit.

So it seems like a commonish theme.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#25

Post by lasagnaphil »

Lio wrote: post #24
lasagnaphil wrote: post #22

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 al…

Mad Max III also described a post apocalyptic world powered by methane made from pig shit. So it seems like a commonish theme.

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.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#26

Post by Lio »

lasagnaphil wrote: post #25
Lio wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mad Max III also described a post apocalyptic world powered by methane made from pig shit. So it seems like a commonish theme.

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.

Yep definitely. I appreciated it and didn’t know it previously. So cheers.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#27

Post by GravitasFailure »

kumarvvr wrote: post #2

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?

>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.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#28

Post by foreigner »

voisin wrote: post #17
foreigner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

This sounds amazing. Was it just a proof of concept or an actual marketed product installed somewhere? Commercial or residential setting?

It was at a place called Cypress Valley outside of Austin, TX. https://www.cypressvalley.com

Note this was many years ago...

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