Table of Contents The Power of Poop 4 Building a Better Toilet 10 Powerful Poopers 20 Building a Better Poop Digester 29 Pros and Cons of Poop Power 40 Glossary 46 Index 47 Show What You Know 47 Websites to Visit 47 About the Author 48
The Power of Poop Walking into a stinky bathroom usually brings up one thought pee yew But Leroy Mwasaru gave that nasty stench more positive thought than most people Leroy attended Maseno School in Kenya Africa When the school expanded its dormitory space to hold more than 700 students there were problems The pit-style latrines and primitive sewage system caused the area to smell awful Plus the massive waste the system produced was polluting local freshwater resources Meanwhile the only cooking fuel at the school was firewood and the smoke that accumulated inside was choking everyone in the building So Leroy and his friends figured out a way to solve both of these problems they would turn their poop into a clean cooking fuel The average person produces about 700 pounds 317 51 kilograms of poop per year 4
The students set to work designing a Human Waste Bioreactor HWB Their contraption would make use of all the latrine sewage along with organic scraps from the kitchen The waste would be channeled into an underground chamber Working sort of like a compost heap microorganisms would digest and break down the muck and in the process release biogas That gas which was mostly methane was contained in a tank Similar to natural gas it could be used for cooking and heating Leroy and his buddies refined their idea with help from other students Within the year they had a working system in place with new ideas to improve it 5
