Gates Foundation awards $1.5M for waste-to-biodiesel project in Ghana

In New York, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a $1.5 million award for a “Next-Generation Urban Sanitation Facility” in Accra, Ghana, that will develop the biotechnologies to turn the fecal sludge in sewage into methane and biodiesel. Kartick Chandran, associate professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia Engineering heads up the project.

Chandran explains, “Thus far, sanitation approaches have been extremely resource- and energy-intensive and therefore out of reach for some of the world’s poorest but also most at-need populations. This project will allow us to move forward and develop practical technologies that will be of great value around the world.”

If successful, the biorefinery would make sewage treatment an economical possibility for the developing world, contributing to both energy security and improved water conditions around the world.