Bill Gates has drunk a glass of water made from human faeces, to showcase technology he said could provide clean water in the developing world.

In a video posted on his blog, Mr Gates watched as the human waste was fed into the processor, before drinking the end product from a glass.

"The water tasted as good as any I've had out of a bottle. And having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It's that safe," he wrote in the blogpost.

In the video, the developer of the Omniprocessor system, Peter Janicki, says the raw "sewer sludge" is first boiled, during which process the water vapour is separated from the solids.

Those solids are then put into a fire, producing steam that drives an engine producing electricity for the system's processor and for the local community.

The water is put through a cleaning system to produce drinking water.