My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica: University of Ghent Solar Powered Urine to Beer Converter can end African Water Crisis

Thursday, July 28, 2016

University of Ghent Solar Powered Urine to Beer Converter can end African Water Crisis

Fellow Jamaicans, I, Lindsworth Deer, have decide to renounce my Jamaican citizenship and move to Belgium.

This as researchers at the University of Ghent have created a water purification machine that can be used to make fertilizer and beer from urine as noted in the article “Turning urine into beer. Yes, that's a thing now”, published July 28, 2016 by Erin Carson, CNET News.



This as instead of urine going down the toilet, you can literally piss into their machine and get water out the other end. The researchers at the University of Ghent tested their machine, under the slogan #peeforscience which University of Ghent researcher Sebastiaan Derese called the “Sewer Brewer” at a music festival in Ghent, Belgium in July, converting some 1,000 liters of water into the righteous liquid.

Good to note that this isn’t the first time that this has been attempted; a 2015 music festival in Denmark, the team used urine to fertilize barley to make beer. Clean Water Services in Oregon even attempted to use recycled toilet water to make beer. There is even a San Francisco-based Half Moon Bay Brewing company that uses water recycled from toilets, showers and sinks to make Beer.

So what makes their tech special?

University of Ghent Solar Powered Urine to Beer Maker – Solution to the African Water problem  

Aside from making water to make beer, this machine, which is solar powered, has the potential to end world hunger and solve the Water problem in places like Saudi Arabia, Asia and Africa as noted in “Urine Beer - You read that right - is about to become a thing thanks to a Belgian University”, published July 27, 2016 by Aaron Homer, The Inquisitr.

To their Credit, Saudi Arabia is already planning to build the world’s largest Solar Desalination plant in at Al Khafji city in 2017 as described in my blog article entitled “How Saudi Arabian Solar Desalination and Solar Distillation can compete with Traditional Water”.

As much as this may seem to be a joke, this machine can make some 663 million people have clean drinking water via what is effectively a water conservation method similar to recycling Wastewater for drinking as I’d argued in my blog article entitled “Water Wastage at MICO - How Waste Water Recycling and Rainwater Harvesting benefits Agriculture”. 

Closer to home, waste from your urine can then be purified, collected and used as fertilizer in your home garden as described in my blog article entitled “How to Cut Glass Bottles to make a Rooftop Garden Wick-Based Hydroponic System”. 

This could basically solve Jamaica’s Water Crisis, albeit I’d try Rainwater Harvesting as described in my blog article entitled “How NWC’s Water Conservation in Drought 2016 means Rainwater Harvesting with Digital Meters” 

So how did this idea Kevin Costner WaterWorld Style, Start out?

University of Ghent's Sewer Brewer - Sports venues or Airports before Africans dying of Thirst

Good to note that this is the same water that you drink that comes out in your urine. It’s just purified to make it drinkable.

The researchers at the University of Ghent basically used the tried and tested nano-particulate filter technique instead of a reverse osmosis methods as explained in my blog article entitled “How MIT Researchers use White Pine Tree Branches as effective a Xylem Water Filter

They used solar energy, most likely from a solar concentrator, to heat water in a boiler as described in the article “Belgian scientists make novel water-from-urine machine”, published Wednesday Jul 27, 2016, Reuters

Then a nano filter, possibly a xylem filtered is used to filter the water, removing nutrients like potassium, phosphorous and nitrogen salts and leaving behind pure potable water. This can then be used for drinking purposes, with hot water being used to wash away the potassium, phosphorous and nitrogen salts to be separated and used to make fertilizer.

However, known Belgians, expect to see this tech at sports venues or airports in the form of water Cooler.

Or, more likely, in SodaStream Beer Bar, which is all the rage in Europe to make homemade beer as described in my blog article entitled “How SodaStream Beer Bar makes Home Brewing Easy as US Craft and Big Beer Breweries will Resist” before it becomes cheap enough to help the Saudi Arabians and African dying of thirst.

  

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