• Community Treatment

     

    Supercritical Water Oxidation

    Duke is developing a fecal sludge treatment system designed to treat the waste of 1000-1200 people, a neighborhood-scale solution using supercritical water oxidation. 

  • Community Treatment

     

    Supercritical Water Oxidation

    Our community-scale prototype treatment system is built in a 20-foot shipping container. Water is heated and pressurized to supercritical conditions, oxygen is added, and fecal sludge is burned in the supercritical water in seconds.

  • Onsite Treatment

     

    Anaerobic Digester and Pasteurization Latrine (ADPL)

    For groups of 20-40 users, Duke is developing a multiple-household, combined toilet and treatment system which uses anaerobic digestion and heat pasteurization.

  • Onsite Treatment

     

    Anaerobic Digester and Pasteurization Latrine (ADPL)

    The combined toilet and treatment system is undergoing field testing in Kenya, India and the Philippines. Biogas produced in the digester is burned to heat and pasteurize the liquid effluent.

  • Odor Control

    Bad odors threaten the adoption of new sanitation solutions in developing countries. Duke is investigating potential approaches to mitigate malodor in diverse applications.

Improving Sanitation for Developing Countries

Despite progress on the UN’s millennium goal to improve sanitation worldwide, 2.4 billion people are still using unimproved sanitation facilities, including the nearly one billion people who practice open defecation. The result is the spread of diarrheal germs which, according to the CDC, are the cause of 1 in 9 child deaths worldwide--the second most common cause of death among children under the age of 5.

Several research projects are underway in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke to help address this issue.  A neighborhood-scale fecal sludge processing system is being developed to provide human waste treatment for communities of 1000-1200 people. A combined toilet and processing system is being engineered to offer onsite treatment for groups of 20-50 people. Effective methods of odor control for these and many other solutions are also being investigated. See the tabs above for more information on any of these projects.

This work has been made possible through the generous funding of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.