HomerS Posted July 12, 2021 Share Posted July 12, 2021 LSAN, South Korea (WKRC/CBS Newspath) - Using a toilet can pay for your coffee or buy you bananas at a university in South Korea, where waste is being used to help power a building. Cho Jae-weon, an urban and environmental engineering professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), has designed an eco-friendly toilet connected to a laboratory that uses human waste to produce biogas and manure. The BeeVi toilet - a portmanteau of the words bee and vision - uses a vacuum pump to send feces into an underground tank, reducing water use. There, microorganisms break down the waste to methane, which becomes a source of energy for the building, powering a gas stove, hot-water boiler and solid oxide fuel cell. There are three of the toilets in a campus building that opened in 2018. "If we think outside the box, feces can make energy and manure. Circulating this precious value back into the ecological system and the economy is the idea of BeeVi toilet," Cho said. An average person defecates about 500g a day, which can be converted to 50 liters of methane gas, the environmental engineer said. This gas can generate 0.5kWh of electricity or be used to drive a car for about 1.2km (0.75 miles). The manure is also used in a nearby garden. Cho has devised a virtual currency called Ggool, which means honey in Korean. Each person using the eco-friendly toilet earns 10 Ggool a day. Students can use the currency to buy goods on campus, from freshly brewed coffee - approximately 15 Ggool - to instant cup noodles, fruits and books. The students can pick up the products they want at a shop and scan a QR code to pay with Ggool. "We put value on person's faeces and give 10 Ggool as toilet income and basic income," said Cho. "I think everyone can put different values on 10 Ggools. Some people say it's worth about three dollars while others say it's like the price of coffee." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John1955 Posted July 12, 2021 Share Posted July 12, 2021 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Geiger Posted July 12, 2021 Share Posted July 12, 2021 500G is 1.1 pounds @ $3 a dump… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oldcarfan27 Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 7 hours ago, Tom Geiger said: 500G is 1.1 pounds @ $3 a dump… Plus tax! It is a luxury, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Posted July 13, 2021 Share Posted July 13, 2021 Talk about turning you-know-what into gold... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteski Posted July 14, 2021 Share Posted July 14, 2021 Turds. Yes, it is a safe word here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HomerS Posted July 14, 2021 Author Share Posted July 14, 2021 On 7/12/2021 at 5:22 PM, Tom Geiger said: 500G is 1.1 pounds @ $3 a dump… The dollar menu at Taco Bell really DOES pay for itself! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Posted July 14, 2021 Share Posted July 14, 2021 9 hours ago, HomerS said: The dollar menu at Taco Bell really DOES pay for itself! Might be the closest thing out there to a perpetual motion machine... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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