Thursday 18 September 2014

The Nano Membrane Toilet receives further funding

We are delighted to announce that the Nano Membrane Toilet has received further funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to continue the development of the toilet.   This next phase will take us to January 2016 when we will have a prototype ready for field testing.   We're really excited to be starting work again after a 6 month break.

We will be continuing to work on some of the components from phase one, particularly the initial collection chamber, the membrane, the flush and the screw, the latter in collaboration with UKZN.   The biggest change is that rather than coating the dried solids, we're now looking to combust them in the toilet using a gasifier - we'll be working with RTI who are already testing their gasifier in India.   This changes the energy balance of the toilet, for example we can now consider recovering the water using a heat exchanger instead of the beads, and we won't have to use the bicycle power generator or hand crank to power the membrane processes.

These new components will require changes to the overall toilet design, and also an intelligent control system which we'll work on with Three Bird Swan.   We'll also continue to collect the perceptions of our target users, through interviews with the customers of Clean Team in Ghana.

Keep following the blog for updates and get in touch with any questions.

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