Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

Rob Hughes and colleagues at Live & Learn Environmental Education in Cambodia will develop and test floating biodigesters for use by floating communities to treat human waste and convert it to fertilizer and gas for light and cooking. These biodigesters would provide sanitation options and economic opportunities for communities that live on water.

Victor Barinov of the Polytechnic Institute of New York University in the U.S. will test the ability of electricity to change the consistency and adhesive properties of dense solids at the bottom of septic tanks. If successful, applying an electrical change via a low-cost battery would allow vacuum pumps to operate at a significantly higher extraction rate to move waste to a treatment facility.

Ioannis Ieropoulos of the University of the West of England, Bristol in the United Kingdom will test the ability of microbial fuel cells to convert urine and sludge into electrical energy while also purifying water by killing disease-causing pathogens in the waste. This technology could enable energy recovery from urine and other waste streams in developing countries.

Yinjie Tang at Washington University in St. Louis in the U.S. proposes to develop a genetically engineered fungal species that can convert fecal sludge to butanol, a high-energy biofuel similar to gasoline. The fungal species could not only produce biofuels, but also kill pathogenic microorganisms in fecal sludge.

Taber Hand of Wetlands Work! in Cambodia will field test a waste water treatment system that uses floating "pods" similar to children's wading pools that are filled with wetland plants and moving water and sit directly under the toilet of houseboats in floating villages in Southeast Asia. Bacteria that reside in the plant roots create a biofilm which traps organic matter and begins a food chain which breaks down the waste and cleans the water.

Blanca Jimenez Cisneros of Mexican Autonomous National University in Mexico will develop software to automatically identify and quantify parasitic helminth eggs in wastewater. The software could provide a rapid and low-cost method for untrained personnel to test wastewater before its reuse in agriculture, thereby reducing parasitic infections in local populations.

Leonardo De Silva Muñoz of AI3D in Mexico proposes to design a mobile waste treatment system that extracts fecal sludge and uses plasma gasification to turn waste into a gas that can be used to synthesize diesel and produce electricity. The treatment system will be fitted into the bed of a pickup truck, and the gas mixture produced will power the truck, the waste treatment process, and the fecal sludge extraction system.

Mark Holtzapple of Texas A&M University in the U.S. seeks to demonstrate that carboxylic acid fermentation can be adapted as a sanitation treatment to not only kill pathogens in the waste but also convert it to liquid fuels, compost, and potable water that can be used for economic gain.

Daniel Yeh of the University of South Florida in the U.S. will develop a decentralized sanitation system which uses an anaerobic digester and membrane biotechnology to treat waste water and produce methane for energy, clean water, and fertilizer for agriculture.

Andrew Parfitt of the Institute for Residential Innovation (IResI) in the U.S. will develop a compact, stand-alone device that uses a non-microbial system of progressive reactor modules to mineralize biomass such as sewage and food waste and simultaneously generate electrical power. This system could be used in any location to provide sanitation and purified water for a potable water supply.