The USF College of Engineering professor whose vision of building a clean-energy system that could solve challenges in parts of the world with no sanitation systems was inducted into the 51在线 Inventors Hall of Fame in October. The technology that鈥檚 been deployed in India and South Africa and lauded on a global scale.
The solar-powered NEWgenerator, which converts human waste into nutrients, energy and clean water intended for agriculture, was launched in projects in India and South Africa.
Professor Daniel Yeh鈥檚 NEWgenerator is one of the university鈥檚 most globally known inventions. It has been supported by the Gates Foundation, was recognized with the Association of University Technology Managers鈥� Patents for a Better World and received the U.S. Patents and Trademark Office鈥檚 2020 Patents for Humanity Award.鈥� The solar-powered NEWgenerator, which converts human waste into nutrients, energy and clean water intended for agriculture, was launched in projects in India and South Africa. The NEWgenerator team was also nominated for the USF World Global Achievement Award in 2019.鈥�
Yeh, a USF professor since 2005, is an international leader in the areas of wastewater engineering and recycling; sustainable and resilient infrastructure; renewable bioenergy; global WaSH (water, sanitation, and hygiene); and life support systems for space travel. The NEWgenerator operates completely off-grid, making it especially effective in areas where clean water and access to electricity is limited.
鈥淲e have close to three billion people on the planet who are struggling with a lack of daily adequate sanitation needs,鈥� Yeh has said. 鈥淲e need to think of waste not as waste but as a recurring renewable resource 鈥� that can help us create a circular economy where we deal with the problem, recycle everything and provide a renewable resource to communities.鈥�
Built into a mini-shipping container with attached solar panels and a hydroponics system, the NEWgenerator鈥檚 technology was tested in India and South Africa in between 2016 and 2020, and then licensed out to companies in India and South Africa, which manufacture NEWgenerator units locally. USF Senior Development Engineer Robert Bair, who earned his PhD in engineering at USF and has been a member of the NEWgenerator team since he was a student, for a year while the technology was being installed and tested.
Yeh鈥檚 work on the NEWgenerator began in 2011 with a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations grant and has since been deployed and tested extensively in rural villages in India and in Durban, South Africa 鈥� places where there is no functioning sewer system. The Gates Foundation also selected the NEWgenerator to be showcased at the 2018 Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing, China.
Yeh is also working with collaborators at NASA to develop wastewater treatment systems for the Artemis Program to establish permanent human presence on the Moon and eventually Mars.
Yeh and his team also launched the start-up company, BioReNEW, Inc., and have collaborated with industry partners worldwide to commercially produce and deploy the NEWgenerator. His inventions also include ICARUS, a floating membrane bioreactor for growing microalgae for biofuel using wastewater as a feedstock. Yeh is also working with collaborators at NASA to develop wastewater treatment systems for the Artemis Program to establish permanent human presence on the Moon and eventually Mars.
The 51在线 Inventors Hall of Fame recognizes the state鈥檚 leading and most impactful inventors. Headquartered at USF, Hall of Fame members achievements are memorialized in displays at the USF Research Park. The Hall of Fame Inventors Walk, which extends from Discovery Hall toward the College of Engineering, passes by a non-working prototype of the NEWgenerator. Yeh was among nine inventors selected for the 2024 class, which also includes USF Vice President for Research & Innovation Sylvia Wilson Thomas.