52 min.
3-D printing technology is being harnessed to take pesky plastic waste to make human waste disappear via composting toilets.
The concept won the $100,000 top prize earlier this month?in the 3D4D Challenge, a contest where teams presented ideas to leverage the fast evolving field of 3-D printing technology to deliver real social benefits in the developing world.
The winning team from University of Washington will invest the prize money to form a non-profit organization?and collaborate with Oaxaca, Mexico-based Water for Humans to create composting latrines and rainwater harvesting systems.
3-D printers are poised to revolutionize manufacturing. Akin to?a traditional inkjet printer, they squirt out liquid material following instructions from a computer. But instead of stopping at one layer of ink, these machines print in three dimensions by putting one layer on top of another.
To do this, traditional ink is replaced with materials that harden with each pass of the nozzle. This can be plastics in the case of?trinkets such as a Yoda statue or a model airplane that can fly.?
Team leader Matthew Rogge and his colleagues aim to use waste plastics such as milk jugs and soda bottles as the source material for their printer, and use it to build latrines that use less energy to manufacture than concrete toilets.
The team will also use the printer to make parts for rainwater collection systems that will be more robust than the typical cobbled-together-from-spare-plumbing-parts versions found in the developing world.
As a proof-of-concept, earlier this year the team printed a life-size boat from more than 250 plastic milk jugs using their custom built Big Red printer. The entered the boat in a milk jug derby and took second place.
The concept for the toilet grew out of Rogge?s work in the Peace Corps building water and irrigation systems in Ghana, Panama and Bolivia. Building custom parts in these low-resources countries, he said, was frustrating.
When he learned about 3-D printing technology, he decided to go back to school to learn how to use it. Winning the $100,000 prize, he said, is like a dream come true.
?I feel lucky to have the chance to start making our ideas into reality,? he said in a news release. ?There is a great potential here to improve people?s quality of life while taking plastic out of the waste stream.?
John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/3-d-printer-turn-waste-plastic-toilets-1C6690658
channel 2 news adrienne bailon yelp stock honda classic news channel 5 nashville weather jason varitek
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.