Many of us have a doubt, perhaps an unhealthy one: what happens when we flush the toilet on an airplane? Is the urban legend that manure ends up in the sky such or is it true? An aerospace engineer has removed all doubts, providing a comprehensive explanation.
Many of us have taken the plane at least once in our lives. Especially when you go up there for the first time, you have the curiosity to use the bathroom. Those of the European low cost airlines are practically all the same: very confined spaces, a sink with non-potable water and a hand fan that gives off very little heat, with the alternative of using paper to dry your fingers. However, the doubt that each of us has had at least once in our life is: what happens after the famous suction?
Indeed, when we download liters of water do not come down as happens in the toilet at home. Paper and our droppings are literally sucked away. Where do they end up? According to an urban legend, the exhaust would eject it all into the atmosphere. But there is also an urban legend that the Earth is flat and all pilots are actors paid by NASA to tell the public that our planet is spherical. That of the pee that disperses in the sky is, precisely, a false belief and an aerospace engineer explained why, in a video showing how an airplane toilet works.
What happens after we flush the plane? An aerospace engineer answers
A Spanish aerospace engineer gave the answer in a TikTok video that went viral around the world. “Did you realize that when you unload, you hear a loud noise? It happens that a suction bomb is activated which takes away everything, really everything, and makes it end up in a large container. To prevent bad smells from being generated, all inside the depot they come also automatically put disinfectant powders“. Here is the video (in Spanish) which also explains with some images what happens from the moment of unloading to the emptying of the deposits:
As soon as the plane touches down, the deposit must be “emptied immediately”. For the European rules, in fact, the medium it cannot restart if the emptying operation has not been completed successfully. One or more workers intervene with a truck and connect the plane’s exhaust to a container of their vehicle, which releases it in a matter of minutes. Only when that of the aircraft is empty, you can leave. In the comments, as expected, the imagination of TikTok users was unleashed: “Okay, now I don’t feel like defecating on an airplane anymore.” Someone insists: “Not on new planes, but yes on old ones.” That’s not true: even in the planes of a few decades ago, the process was exactly the same.
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2023-08-19 13:00:01
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