Characterisation and assessment of the storage of pulped food waste

James Chapman, Yen Truong, and Claire Grandison DSTG

Outline

The management of food waste on board seagoing vessels can be challenging, particularly when operating in waters with restrictions on discharge. Away from a port, vessels have fixed capacity to store waste streams in a manner that is safe and maintains habitability. It is known that the storage of other waste streams on board can result in the generation of hazardous gases, notably H2S. H2S is a risk to health and is of particular concern for the Royal Australian Navy.

Rationale

The successful student will design a factorial experiment to investigate the impacts of different factors on the storage of pulped food waste. Factors to be included in the experimental design include: dilution of the waste stream (flushing through the pulper), water type (freshwater or sweater), temperature (winter to summer extremes), aeration (aerated or not aerated), agitation (mixed or unmixed), detergent (included in pulped waste or not). The waste will need to be held for at least 14 days with regular monitoring of grease build-up as well as gas and effluent generation (composition and concentration). You will be using SPME, GCMS and other spectroscopy to characterise the produced gas products.¹

References

(1) Nielsen, A. T.; Jonsson, S. Trace determination of volatile sulfur compounds by solid-phase microextraction and GC-MS. Analyst 2002, 127 (8), 1045.