South Korean Toilet Turns Excrement Into Power, Digital Currency (reuters.com) 40
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 excrement to produce biogas and manure. Reuters reports: 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. 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).
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 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.
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 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.
Obvious joke (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Obvious joke (Score:1)
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Do you have to share (Score:2)
your location and contact list?
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Now that's what I call a power shit (Score:3)
GIPO. (Score:3)
Wow. A little over a pound a day. Just what are they feeding these people?
Re: GIPO. (Score:2)
About a pound of food a day would be my guess.
Re: GIPO. (Score:4, Informative)
Quite a bit more than that. The average human exhales about a kilogram of CO2 a day, which works out to be about 9 ounces of carbon -- which ultimately come from food. Then of course there is the water content of food, which accounts for about 20% of total fluid intake; that probably adds another pound.
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According to my average? Not nearly enough.
That was my thought too.
Another thought I had was if they are paying people based on the mass and/or energy content of their excrement then would that not encourage some unhealthy behaviors? Overeating is one. Laxative use/abuse might be another. Maybe people will eat non-food items to bring them more cash for their bowel movements.
Not related to poop for coin but there was a guy that thought he needed to make up for lost time not eating some diet supplement. A protein supplement? A fiber supplement?
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I don't see anything in the summary which states how much each Ggool coin is worth.
For all you know each coin is worth a cent, so to buy a cup noodle will require maybe 100 coins, which equals to 10 days of average pooping.
Re: GIPO. (Score:2)
Did I miss it saying the mass was measured? I think the reward is just a base value of what an average excrement is worth in terms of energy.
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Wow. A little over a pound a day. Just what are they feeding these people?
Here in America we shit several pounds a day and we're proud of it. It also smells like apple pie.
Well that explains it... (Score:2)
South Korean Toilet Turns Excrement Into Power, Digital Currency
This explains why in the future all restaurants are Taco Bell, and also probably helps understand the function of the three seashells which are obviously part of the process!
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I watched that movie again recently and Taco Bell was dubbed over with Pizza Hut
Really that is bizarre! Talk about revisionist history (future?)!
I've seen better options. People want "nukes". (Score:2)
There's the Fischer-Tropsch process that can turn carbon and hydrogen rich materials into liquid fuels suitable as replacements for liquid fossil fuels. Any energy content in the materials, be that coal, natural gas, wood chips, or sewage, just reduces the need for energy added by other means.
This process was used for decades in nations rich in coal and natural gas to produce liquid fuels for aircraft and trucks. Coal and natural gas were used because they are rich in carbon and hydrogen but also rich in
Excrement (Score:1)
Video of a seed investor (Score:1)
Funny thing is... (Score:2)
I always thought this was the process with every digital coin. I think that no matter the valuation, eventually digital currencies will be about as valuable as excrement.
San Francisco (Score:2)
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 to instant cup noodles, fruits and books.
They should put these toilets out all over San Francisco. The homeless people could poop in them to earn something they could use to buy food with.
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Great!! (Score:2)
Some people want money.
Some people want power.
It turns out that all they need is some old-fashioned shit.
Incentives (fecal) Matter (Score:1)
That's impressive! (Score:2)
In this part of the world, the only thing we turn excrement into is politicians!
Makes perfect sense to me! (Score:2)