DHAKA: For years, the Gates Foundation has been looking for a machine that could make contaminated water safe to drink.

More than 2.5 billion people on earth have no reliable access to clean drinking water, so the humanitarian implications of such a machine would be immense.

With the Janicki Omniprocessor, the Gates Foundation thinks it's found the best way to do it, converting sewer sludge into water, electricity, and sterile ash that can be used as fertilizer. That system allows the Janicki operator to buy the sewer sludge at cost, and fund for the operation by selling electricity back to the grid. It's an ambitious plan, but the Gates Foundation may have the resources to make it work.

Still, they have to show it works first. To that end, the foundation made a video demonstrating all the steps of the process, culminating with Bill Gates himself drinking a glass from the machine, knowing that just five minutes earlier that water was sewage

Bill Gates said, “I watched the piles of feces go up the conveyer belt and drop into a large bin. They made their way through the machine, getting boiled and treated. A few minutes later I took a long taste of the end result: a glass of delicious drinking water.”

“The water tasted as good as any I’ve had out of a bottle. And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It’s that safe,” he added.

BDST: 1447 HRS, JAN 07, 2015