There are currently more than six billion people in the world, and this number continues to grow every second of every day. For centuries humans have used water to remove waste from our direct contact. In the 1800's the unsound practice of dumping our faeces into the nearest body of water began. The flushing toilet served to remove our faeces from our sight and smell by putting them into a complex system of underground pipes. Every enthusiastic camper knows not to shit upstream but our society gives us no choice but to turn our rivers, bays and oceans into cesspools. Societies determination to ignore our own waste products threatens to bury us with the very things we choose to ignore. .
Below I will try to outline some of the alternatives available to the common Water Closet type water flush toilet.
Oil Recirculating Toilets.
Oil Recirculating Toilets don't use water. They are closed loop systems where mineral oil is used to flush wastes away rather than water. Oil and waste is collected in a storage tank where the waste sinks to the bottom and the oil floats to the top. The oil is then filtered off from the top of the tank, filtered and fed back into the cistern ready to be reused. Meanwhile the waste is separated and contained in a holding tank until it can be disposed of.
An Oil Flush Toilet system consists of a conventional flush toilet, a holding tank and a recycling system. The toilet bowl must be coated with Teflon or another low friction substance to reduce the chance of waste sticking to the surfaces. The most common type of separation tank operates by allowing waste to settle or sink to the bottom of the holding tank whilst the waste floats to the top. The oil can then be drawn from the top to be reused and the waste products can be periodically removed from the bottom. This allows the waste products to be stored in the same tank as used for separation.
When the oil is pumped of from the top of the holding tank to be filtered and reused it is put through a coalescer, which removes particles of waste and water.