Development of static type garbage treatment system

• Main Authors: S. Matsuda, T. Maruchi, T. Shimizu, S. Itaya
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2017-01-01
• Series: Cogent Environmental Science
• Subjects: garbage fraction; urban refuse; static type treatment; microbial ecosystem; overloading
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311843.2017.1322766

Since the garbage fraction of urban refuse causes many troubles and difficulties in treating and disposing of refuse, an effective treatment of the garbage fraction at an individual emission source would bring a variety of great advantages. Among many possible methods, the microbial decomposition type of garbage treatment system would be one of the most anticipated options. For this purpose we have developed a useful domestic garbage treatment system using micro-organisms with little energy consumption called “static type”. In contrast with the conventional type of garbage treatment devices, which had a hard reactor wall and were always equipped with an internal structure for agitation as well as aeration, our system has a very simple structure and a soft outer wall with high breathability, and mixing operation is only performed once a day (=“static type”). It was indicated that the performance of the garbage decomposition in our system was higher than those of the conventional device type in terms of the garbage treatment rate, temperature in the reactor and low smell generation. The stability of the performance of this system over a long period of time was also very good. Although the standard organic loading to the reactor was about 40–50 grams garbage (wet)/L-reactor/day from the results of our laboratory, we tried the overloading test using this static type and could get a good performance even under a loading of 80–100 g/L/day by controlling the lowest temperature in the reactor. In short, our “static type” is certainly an excellent garbage treatment system. The problem is, however, the reason why this type of treatment system showed better performance than the conventional type has not been clarified yet. For example, there was little relation observed between the total cell number on the culture media and the garbage treatment performance. Several enzyme activities of the microorganisms detected were measured, but no obvious correlation was observed. The fact that colonies on the culture media did not reflect the real situation of the microbial ecosystem in the process may be due to the existence of non-culturable bacteria. Thus, the other approach such as DGGE should be used to find out the rate controlling factors in the garbage decomposition process.