Analysis on development status and Prospect of food waste treatment industry

Polaris solid waste network news: during the 13th Five Year Plan period, environmental protection support will continue to increase, and the environmental protection industry is expected to reap policy red envelopes. Waste treatment is one of the supporting industries in the field of environmental protection. At present, the market gap is obvious and the growth space is huge. Food waste treatment is an important part of waste treatment. With strong potential demand, it is expected to usher in an important development opportunity and have a good industrial prospect.
Generation of kitchen waste
Kitchen waste refers to food waste, catering residues, food processing waste, inedible animal and vegetable oils and various oil-water mixtures from families, schools, organs, public canteens and catering industry. It is a part of urban domestic waste.
It can be seen that food waste is mainly generated in restaurants, canteens, food processing industries and other places. Due to the leftovers and food processing waste generated in the process of food production and eating behavior, it also includes some expired inedible food and waste. China is a large country producing food waste, which of course has a great relationship with China's large population base. At the same time, with the rapid growth of China's economy, the acceleration of urbanization and the general improvement of people's living standards, people's demand for food quality is also increasing. As the saying goes, "food is the most important thing for the people", people's requirements for food have changed from "full" to "good". This also makes the production of food waste in China increasing. Data show that many developed cities in China produce more than 3000 tons of domestic waste every day, of which food waste accounts for about 50% or even higher.
At present, the main treatment methods of food waste
Crushing straight row treatment
Crushing and direct discharge treatment is the main method to treat a small amount of scattered food waste in European and American countries. It is to directly crush and crush the food waste at the occurrence point, and then use hydraulic scouring to discharge it into the urban municipal sewage pipe network, merge it with urban sewage and enter the urban sewage treatment plant for centralized treatment. The crushing method has the advantages of low price and simple technology for the treatment of a small amount of scattered food waste, such as household kitchen waste. It can reduce the moisture content of urban waste, reduce the collection capacity, and improve the heating capacity of urban waste.
Landfill treatment
Kitchen waste in many areas of China is sent to landfill together with ordinary waste for landfill treatment. Landfill is the main way of harmless treatment of domestic waste in most countries. Because kitchen waste contains a large number of degradable components, short stabilization time, which is conducive to the recovery and use of landfill site, and the operation is simple, so it is widely used. With more and more extensive understanding of the availability of kitchen waste, the landfill rate of kitchen waste is showing a downward trend in Europe, America, Japan and China. Even many countries have banned kitchen waste from entering the landfill for treatment.
Fertilizer treatment
The fertilizer treatment methods of food waste mainly include aerobic composting and anaerobic digestion. Aerobic composting process is to use extracellular enzymes secreted by aerobic microorganisms to decompose organic solids into soluble organic substances, and then penetrate into cells, so as to realize the whole composting process through microbial metabolism. At the same time, some similar methods are derived from aerobic composting. For example, earthworm composting is a new technology developed in recent years. Earthworms swallow a large amount of kitchen waste, mix it with soil, and convert organic matter into nutrients that can be used by themselves or other organisms through mechanical grinding of sand bag and biochemical action in intestine. Anaerobic digestion of food waste refers to the decomposition of organic waste by microorganisms under specific anaerobic conditions, in which carbon, hydrogen and oxygen are transformed into methane and carbon dioxide, while nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other elements are retained in the residues and transformed into forms that are easy to be absorbed and utilized by passive plants.
Feed chemical treatment
The current feed market has great potential. As food waste is used as raw material, it has low price, huge supply, rich nutrition and large profit range, and has strong market competitiveness. There are two ways to feed: (1) biological treatment to make feed. The principle is that the cultured bacteria are added to the food waste for sealed storage, and the bacteria are propagated and killed to make feed. (2) High temperature disinfection feed. The principle is to adopt the principle of high-temperature disinfection, kill the virus, and process it into feed after crushing, which can be eaten by poultry and livestock. The mature feed processing method of food waste is the comprehensive utilization of granulation technology, extrusion and drying technology. The bacterial concentration in the extruded feed was much lower than that in other samples. Due to the increasing temperature during extrusion, a single screw dry extrusion process can greatly reduce the concentration of potential pathogens. At present, some manufacturers have developed supporting technical equipment and put it into operation.
Energy treatment
The energy treatment of food waste has sprung up rapidly in recent years, mainly including incineration, thermal decomposition and hydrogen production by fermentation. The incineration method has high efficiency in the treatment of kitchen waste, resulting in about 5% of the residues conducive to disposal. The incineration is carried out in a special incinerator, and the generated heat energy can be converted into steam or electric energy, so as to realize the recycling of energy. However, the food waste has high moisture content and low calorific value, and auxiliary fuel needs to be added during combustion, resulting in the problem of large investment, At the same time, tail gas treatment is also a difficult problem; Thermal decomposition method is to pyrolyze the waste at high temperature to convert the energy contained in the waste into the form of gas, oil and carbon, and then reuse it. Pyrolysis method has broad application prospects, but the technology has not yet reached the practical stage, and it is rarely used at present; As a high-quality clean energy, hydrogen is generally considered to be the most potential alternative energy, which has been studied by many scholars. The energy treatment of kitchen waste will receive more and more attention.