nonstick ceramic surfaces

Stainless steel toilet bowls do come with a Teflon surface but ceramic is already pretty slippery if kept clean. There are "lubricating" tank additives that also help in this regard. Or, you could eat a lot more fiber.

Many thanks. Looks are deceptive. For example,in stainless steel churns for making butter, the stain less steel surface is intentionally provided with a structured designed surface which is not smooth, but granular which holds a surface film of water. It is this film of water that prevents the butter from sticking to the stainless steel surface of butter churns.

Same applies to ceramic surfaces. Smooth looking surface does not ensure non stick quality.

Surface treatment lubricant devices and PTFE solution additives are no doubt available, but these are not built in permanent surface quality which only can ensure uniform near permanent nonstick performnce.

I guess I've never thought of this as a big problem. Is there something I'm missing?

There are many general utility works where we are ignorant but scientific and reasoning minds add something fundamental to the general utility items. It is a outlook of scientist, please enhance your awareness about `Survismeter` invented by Man Singh, an indian scientits. It solves many problems of interfaces and surfaces of materisals along with 80% saving in experimentation with no escape of inflammabale and VOC.

Surmil, The problem with less water usage was discovered when low flow toilets were made mandatory on all new construction: the effluent stayed in the pipes instead of being delivered to the treatment site, causing more problems. Even if the bowl is frictionless, the pipes are not, so what is flushed must overcome that friction as well.

Dragon

That's a "one size fits all" problem. Here in Pittsburgh, we take our water out of the river, wash our clothes with it, brush our teeth with it, urinate in it, make beer with it (yep, in that order), and then put it back in the river about 6 miles downstream cleaner than when we took it out. Who cares whether we use low flush or high flush? Why did we have to adopt the same hard-to-flush toilets as the arid regions.

That would be a great idea. The big problem, to those of us in the country on well water is hard water minerals and iron sticking to the bowl. This is a huge problem to keep clean and requires large amounts of strong chemicals, acids, etc that can't be good for the environment. A non-stick surface that will release the mineral deposits with a gentle wipe would be a great idea.

What about nano technology?

Nano technology very Good. Why not? But how?

On world basis per capita water availability will be nearly doubled,if we can reduce the water required by flush toilets. Water used by flush toilets is more than 50 times water required for drinking and cooking. And please let us not forget water is the next oil for the world.

While I question the amount of water (50X that for drinking) being used for toilet flushing, this is no doubt a significant means to reduce water usage. Normally, smoother surface (less asperities) reduces the ability of materials to stick to a surface. A previous poster suggested eating more fiber, which should help, but most people in the world eat more fiber than westerners anyway. Sounds like a good research project to define methods to prevent fecal buildup on the surface. Of course, fecal matter isnt the only problem as iron and other salts can buildup too. Perhaps better treatment of the water, or addition of a chemical at the toilet tank is possible.

Of course, in many poor villages, they use latrines, which often solves the problem.

Hi, Surmil!

Welcome to the legislated toilet flush, designed by politicians who somehow believe that a 1.6 gallon head will actually remove the contents of a toilet bowl on the first flush. Of course the interesting side effect of this ...um... 'head in the toilet' kind of thinking is that everyone who has been bamboozled into believing that they are doing the environment a favour with the mini-flush has to flush the toilet two and three times (hmmm...2 or 3 times 1.6 gallons is....nope, the math's too difficult).

There are several "inside the box" solutions for this problem, and I congratulate you for looking for others as well, although perhaps you should look at the first solution below before you progress any farther along the lines of inquiry you have begun.

Solution 1. We should eat a lot less. That way, the toilet will have to be flushed only twice to get its contents into a waste pipe that has a diameter so large, in most cases (4 inches or more), that the 1.6 gallon flush only slightly dampens it, and the buildup downline in the horizontal runs becomes magnified over time well past the old amount when the water flow they were originally designed for was "wasted". Plus, this solution might help with a nation of overweight people.

Solution 2. Everyone is built physiologically differently at the point of waste discharge. Perhaps you could design a bowl with a 'custom flush direction' flow that targets one's specific deposit area. If there are several people in the houselhold, the target areas could be electronically controlled by a coded flush. Once the argument between husband and wife gets ironed out over who should be "flush number one", the tech-y wise teenager will probably have grabbed up that 'distinction' (was that a pun?) anyway.

Solution 3. And this is commercially available already...it's called a 'power flush' or goes by names of that general ilk. It uses air pressure generated by the household water pressure to force the puny 1.6 gallons out of the tank in a massive thrust that, assuming the bowl is equally served by water flow out of the rim and other places, completely empties it because even if your diet is composed entirely of glue, very little can stand in the way of the scouring effect of that flush. It used to be quite noisy, but I've read somewhere (probably Google) that the newer variety is quiet in nature. Check out "P2 flush". To those of us who have been chained to a 1.6 gallon flow (hard to dignify with the name of 'flush', really), seeing a power flush at work has become quite a thrill. Not surprising when one considers that 'entertainment' has devolved into watching TV and deciding which popular snack food to patronize this week. While I doubt that people invite friends over to watch a power flush toilet flush, or even try to 'go' several times a day just to see it CLEAN that bowl (!), I'm absolutely certain that new owners invite their friends to see it at work at least once, even on an empty toilet.

Solution 4. This is a solution that the various departments of government having to do with natural resources figured out a long time ago. It's eliminate the flush altogether. There are advantages and disadvantages to the householder, however for this one. First, it means a containment area for the wastes. One upside of that is that the containment area can be used to produce methane for household lighting and cooking uses. Another is that the containment area can be in the way of household waste water flow. A teflonned containment area would probably clean itself out with only one person taking a shower, so there's a use for the teflon! The disadvantages of such as system, as I recall from various parks I've visited, is that it takes a great deal of deodorant to keep the area smelling anything at all like somewhere you'd want to spend any time. The other difficulty with this system is that it would be most effectively situated in the lowest floor of a home, often in the basement. If generally employed, the flushless system would have an effect on the English language. Instead of saying, "I gotta go to the loo!" or "I gotta go to the bathroom" (whose idea was it to combine the bathing area with the defecation area?), people would begin saying "I gotta go downstairs" "below", or "to the basement". And if you accidentally dropped your Rolex into the toilet, things would be a lot different when it came to fishing it back out.

And finally, Solution 5. Substitute the fill and flapper valves in a tank toilet and the diaphram in a wall flush toilet with a timer that permits 1.6 gallons at ambient water pressure to be directly applied agains the lower rear area of the bowl once the flush handle has been released. If a way can be found to contain the splash of that powerful flow within the bowl, you'd only have to contend with scale buildup over time. (If containment wasn't possible, the result would be too horrible to consider, and perhaps separately flush-able teflonned walls and floor would have to be designed to accompany a flush that would have to have been originated outside the room with the door closed.)

The bottom line (so to speak) here, is that regardless of the suface nature of the bowl, it's also a vaible alternative to find a way to remove its contents in a single flush.

Mark

OK, CR4, guru me. And may God have mercy upon your souls!

1. Give your location. You can add your location by adding it via the button at the buttom of the thread for your posting. For advice for 3rd world countries, contact Bill Gates' Foundation for free advice. For USA advice, ask your educational institute for a referral to ideas.

2. For a better toilet, first analyze the material selection and shape of current toilets. This is "benchmarking".

3. For a lower friction ceramic, contact ceramic manufacturers or your local college or university's mechanical engineering department. If you prefer a educational institute with a great track record, try California Institute of Technology (CalTech). Or, I can highly recommend Harvey Mudd College's engineering department. Many major companies (Boeing, GE, Westinghouse) come to them.