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AbstractAn international organisation offers an organic waste treatment method, which ensures optimum quantitative and qualitative waste exploitation in a small number of days without toxic side-products and with low operation costs. The end products are an edible biomass with a high nutritional value for the production of animal feeds, readily exploitable fuel gas, and fertilisers. The technology owner is looking for partners for a licence agreement and for industrializing the technology.DetailsThe increasing amount of waste which has to be eliminated in European countries brings up the necessity to find commercially benefiting ways to reduce the quantity of waste and to limit discharges to ultimate residues which have been rendered appropriately inert. Therefore, there is a real need to develop technologies which can enable waste to be recycled in an optimum manner that does not depend on the waste's origin and/or nature. Also, the energy cost of recycling must be as low as possible.The offered technology answers these needs, as it provides a process for treating organic waste (animal origin or sludge from water purification), which ensures optimum quantitative and qualitative waste exploitation in a small number of days, without toxic side-products and with low operation costs. In the here proposed open circuit method, the organic waste is optimally exploited to produce edible biomass with a high nutritional value for the production of animal feeds, of readily exploitable fuel gas, and of fertilisers. The organic waste treatment method comprises the following steps: • collecting the waste • introducing the waste in a first reactor without prior sterilisation • decomposing the waste using mesophilic or thermophilic anaerobic bacteria • recovering the liquid effluent and transferring it to a second reactor • producing an edible biomass using heterotrophic or photoheterotrophic bacteria • recovering and packaging the biomass produced The mixture of different mesophilic or thermophilic anaerobic bacteria, which decompose the waste in the first reactor, are commensal animal intestine bacteria, simultaneously hydrolysing the different biological polymers and forming part of the waste to small carbon- and nitrogen-containing compounds which can be assimilated by the heterotrophic or photoheterotrophic bacteria present in the second reactor. When using thermophilic anaerobic bacteria, waste decomposition in the first reactor is carried out at a temperature in the range of 45 °C to 80 °C. This procedure eliminates pathogenic germs such as bacteria, yeasts, protozoa or viruses which may be present in the waste. Furthermore, the waste decomposition is carried out over a period which is sufficient to decompose the waste to a degree of >80 % and results in production of an effluent comprising a liquid and a solid phase. The fuel gases also produced during waste decomposition are collected and used to heat the first reactor. Additionally, composting the residual solid matter is upgrading it in the form of compost. After separation, the liquid effluent is transferred to the second reactor, where edible biomass is produced by heterotrophic or photoheterotrophic bacteria from the Rhodospirillaceae family. Finally, the edible biomass is recovered by separation from the liquid effluent in which it is immersed. The packaging of the edible biomass comprises draining and/or sterilising and/or dehydrating means. Innovative Aspects: Beside of solving environmental problems caused by an accumulation of organic waste, the offered technology has the advantage of giving value to the waste by transforming it into an edible biomass with a high nutritional value which can be used in animal feeds, fuel gas which is exploitable by combustion and fertilising products, without producing toxic residues and at a cost which is compatible with industrial requirements.
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