KUALA LUMPUR, July 15 ― A South Korean university professor has devised a way to convert human waste into power.
To make it worthwhile, Cho Jae-weon, an urban and environmental engineering professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) even came up with a virtual currency, Ggool, which means honey in Korean, and pays users, mostly students, 10 Ggool to use the toilet.
Daily Mail reported that Cho's eco-friendly toilet is connected to a laboratory that uses excrement to produce biogas and manure.
Called 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.
Once there, microorganisms will break the waste down into methane, which becomes a source of energy for the university's science building.
The gas powers a stove, hot-water boiler and solid oxide fuel cell.
Cho said feces has precious value to make energy and manure.
“I have put this value into ecological circulation,” he said.
An average adult will defecate about 481 grams a day that can be converted to 49 litres of methane, Cho said.
That, he added, was enough to generate 0.5kWh of electricity that can be used to charge your phone for an hour every day for a month or drive a car for about 1.2 kilometres.
On Ggool, the currency can be used to buy goods on campus—like freshly brewed coffee, instant noodles, fruit and even books.
The students can pick up the products they want at a special Ggool market and scan a QR code to pay for their goods.
A postgraduate student at the university Heo Hui-jin said it did not strike her that feces can be treasure and great value.
“I even talk about feces during mealtimes, to think about buying any book I want.”
