Monday, March 9, 2015

Janicki Omniprocessor

I read an interesting article from Bill Gates’s blog. This article is about a high technology factory called Janicki ominprocessor. This factory can turn human waste into drinking water, and at the same time, it generates electricity. This article is coming with a video which posted on January 5. In the video Bill gates drink a glass of pure water which was human excrement 5 minutes before. Although we can’t say that turning excrement into clean drinking water is a great innovation [why not? --JM], the unique part of Janicki Omniprocessor is to achieve generate electricity, wastewater treatment, and solid waste treatment together.

            I played a computer game called SimCity in which the hardest challenges are wastewater treatment and electricity problems. They are hard because they are not only about wastewater treatment and electricity, but also environment problems. I have to build water treatment plants and power stations in the corner because they pollute land, and people who live near to them are easy to get sick. Although Simcity is a computer game, it comes from real life. Water and pollution problems have already become major problems for many countries. For example, urbanization in China is getting worse and worse; water for living and urban sewage have become big issues. According to the Ministry of Water Resources statistics, 400 of 669 cities have inadequate water supplies, and 110 cities have serious water shortages; 30 cities with 32 million people are plagued by water shortages. Among 46 major cities, 45.6% of cities have poor water quality. This is not only in China, but also in many countries around the world. So the Janicki Omniprocessor may be the answer for these problems. I really like this factory, maybe today people don't necessary need it, but I believe this kind of technology will become more and more important in the future. I think resource recycling will become more important in the future, because nature has been loaded to the limit. There are so many people living in the world and the population keeps growing. We can’t just take from nature, we need to coexist. Humans need to develop sustainably: I think human will reach zero wastage rate in the future.
--Lingyu Zhang