Sanitation facility will make biodiesel and prevent waterborne diseases

In Accra, Ghana, a 'Next-Generation Urban Sanitation Facility' is being developed at Columbia University, US, after receiving a $1.5 million (€1.06 million) grant from Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Upon completion the facility, which has not yet broken ground, will produce biodiesel and methane from faecal sludge.

Kartik Chandran, a professor at the university, will develop the project, along with Waste Enterprises and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

In addition to providing the local community with a low-cost fuel, the Next-Generation Urban Sanitation Facility will reduce the levels of human waste matter that is pumped into the water supply, resulting in illnesses. 1.8 million people die each year from water-transmitted illnesses such as cholera.

'By training tomorrow's engineers in sustainable approaches to resource and energy recovery rather than wastewater treatment, a sea-change can be achieved in the way we perceive of and manage human waste,' says Chandran. 'In fact, the term "wastewater" is already archaic. Water is, after all, just water with a different chemical and biological composition.'