According to Samsung’s official announcement, its research and development arm Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) began work on this project in 2019. Over the past three years, SAIT developed the product’s design with modular technology and core technologies for its functioning. The efforts recently culminated in this prototype product, which Samsung has successfully tested. The reinvented toilet from Samsung is energy-efficient and boasts effluent treatment capability. It also includes heat treatment and bioprocessing technologies. This is to kill pathogens from human waste, so the released effluent and solids are safe for environmental disposal. The system dehydrates the solid waste and dries and combusts it into ashes. Liquid waste is treated through a biological purification process and can be recycled fully.
Samsung will offer the reinvented toilet tech royalty-free
According to the WHO (World Health Organization) and UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund), about 3.6 billion people around the world don’t have access to safe sanitation facilities today. They have limited access to water and sanitation hygiene. This leads to the death of half a million children under age 5 every year from diarrheal diseases. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge in 2011 to address this problem. The initiative looked to develop transformative toilet technologies for people with limited access to safe sanitation facilities. Samsung’s new toilet prototype meets the performance required by the Foundation for household commercialization. The company held an event at SAIT in Suwon, Korea to announce the completion of this project yesterday. The event was attended by several top-level executives from both parties, including Gyoyoung Jin, Head of SAIT and Sun Kim, Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates, co-chair of the Foundation also recently met Samsung Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee, who recently received a presidential pardon for his prison sentence. They discussed various ongoing initiatives and efforts to address the challenges facing humanity. Samsung said it will offer patents related to this reinvented toilet royalty-free to developing countries during the commercialization stage. The company is still refining its design to make it more efficient. It then plans to work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to identify industry partners for the product’s mass production.
