热心于公益事业的比尔·盖茨这些年在环保马桶上没少花钱。自从盖茨基金会于2011年发起了“改造马桶挑战”后，已有多个机构参与过这一挑战。近日三星研发出一款无需用水并能把便便烧成灰的马桶，既环保又节能，有望投入大规模生产。

 

For over a decade, Bill Gates has had a distinct focus on toilets. As part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge launched in 2011, part of an effort to transform toilet technologies to manage human waste safely and effectively for the billions of people using unsafe sanitation¹ facilities across the globe.

十多年来，比尔·盖茨对马桶一直情有独钟。比尔及梅琳达·盖茨基金会于2011年发起了“改造马桶挑战”，目的是通过改革马桶技术为全球数十亿使用不安全卫生设施的人安全有效地处理粪便。

 

The latest project in this challenge comes from Samsung, which created a toilet that uses no water and can turn human waste into ashes.

参与这一挑战的最新马桶由三星研发，无需用水还能将人类粪便化成灰。

 

Born out of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, the research and development arm of Samsung Electronics, the team presented the finished core technologies and a "successfully developed and tested prototype," to Gates as part of a partnership³ between the two groups, according to a Samsung press release.

据三星的新闻稿称，三星电子的研发机构三星综合技术院团队将已完成的核心技术和“成功研发并经过测试的马桶原型”交给了合作方比尔·盖茨。

 

The three years of research and development from Samsung led to a prototype good for household use and the development of components⁴ and modular technology with the goal of easy commercialization.

三星花了三年时间研发出的这款原型产品不仅适合家庭使用，而且组件和模块化技术也便于投入商业化生产。

 

Core Samsung technologies include heat treatment and bioprocessing to kill pathogens from human waste and make the released effluent and solids safe for the environment. The toilet system enables the treated water to be fully² recycled. Solid waste is dehydrated, dried, and combusted into ashes, while liquid waste is treated through a biological purification process.

三星的这些核心技术包括杀死人类粪便中病原菌并将排泄物进行环保处理的热处理和生物工艺。有了这一马桶系统，经过处理的废水便可以完全回收利用。固态粪便经过脱水、干燥后燃成灰，而液态粪便则进行生物净化处理。

 

Samsung plans to offer royalty-free licenses⁵ of patents related to the project to developing countries during the commercialization stage and will work with the foundation to bring the technology to mass production.

三星计划在商业化阶段向发展中国家提供该马桶项目的免版税的专利许可，并将与盖茨基金会合作将这一技术投入大批量生产。

 

Dubbed⁶ as energy efficient, the toilet requires no water, serving as a bonus for use in remote areas, the same places where the nitrogen and micro-pollutants from human waste can prove dangerous to the environment and people that encounter it.

这款号称很节能的马桶不需要水，非常适合在偏远地区使用，也正是在这些地方，人类粪便中的氮和微污染物会危害到环境和接触到粪便的人。

 

The Reinvent the Toilet Challenge has remained on a steady course since its inception⁷ in 2011, including hosting Reinvented Toilet Expo events over the years. "There are 4.5 billion people in the world without access to adequate sanitation systems," Doulaye Koné, Gates Foundation deputy director of water, sanitation, and health, says in a past statement. "We need new science and new engineering to solve the problem."

自从2011年发起“改造马桶挑战”后，这一活动一直在正轨上，这些年还举办过多届改造马桶博览会。盖茨基金会的水、卫生和健康部副主任杜拉叶·科内曾在一份声明中说道：“世界上有45亿人没有像样的卫生系统可用，我们需要新科学和新工程来解决这一问题。”

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