Samsung, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation build ‘Reinvented Toilet’
Samsung, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation build ‘Reinvented Toilet’
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in response to the ‘Reinvent the Toilet’ Challenge has completed a project in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that resulted in the creation of a prototype toilet that is secure and intended for use at home.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), the company’s research and development division, started working together on the reinvented toilet in 2019. SAIT recently finished developing the core technologies for the toilet and successfully developed and tested a prototype.
Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jay Y. Lee, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, met to review the results of the reinvented toilet project and to exchange ideas about global social contribution efforts. Bill Gates presented the Foundation’s charitable goals and active projects at the conference, and Vice Chairman Lee reaffirmed Samsung’s commitment to using its innovations to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.
During the commercialization phase, Samsung intends to grant developing nations royalty-free rights to project-related patents. Samsung will also keep on consulting closely with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to assist in commercializing the innovations. After improving the design for mass manufacturing, the two organizations will collaborate to find industrial partners eager to commercialize the technology.
The core design, component, and modular technologies were created over the course of three years of research and development by SAIT, which resulted in the successful creation of a working prototype for use in homes. The product satisfies the performance standards set by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for commercialization of a redesigned toilet for household use and is energy-efficient with effluent treatment capacity.
Samsung’s primary technologies include heat-treatment and bioprocessing techniques that eliminate pathogens from human waste and render the released effluent and solids environmentally acceptable. The system makes it possible to completely recycle the treated water. While liquid waste is cleaned using a biological purification procedure, solid trash is dehydrated, dried, and burned into ashes.
