Title: How to benefit from the food waste in the era of global warming?

Authors: Sungur Kaan Gökbulak; Serap Nazir; Sena Tunçel; Mustafa Özilgen

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey ' Department of Chemical Engineering, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey ' Department of Gastronomy and Culinary Arts, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey ' Department of Food Engineering, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract: Global warming increases the food waste; in return, the food waste causes further increase in global warming. Finding a secondary use for the food waste in the kitchen or burning it for recovering energy are among the remedies recommended. Thermodynamic analyses showed that 1 t of fast food restaurant waste (FFRW), after pressing its water out and pre-drying, would be capable of producing approximately 3.5 GW electricity. Finding a way for the secondary use in the kitchen for the entire waste of 18 fruits or vegetables in Turkey may recover 7.2 GJ y-1 of energy. This would be equivalent to that of electric power production with the FFRW in Rankine with regeneration cycle in less than three seconds. Analyses indicated that electric power generation from the FFRW in a Rankine cycle would be feasible and reduce its global warming potential, but trying to find a secondary use for the kitchen waste is not.

Keywords: fast food restaurant waste; kitchen waste; energy and exergy savings; cumulative degree of perfection; global warming potential.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGW.2020.106595

International Journal of Global Warming, 2020 Vol.20 No.3, pp.216 - 236

Received: 25 Jun 2019
Accepted: 26 Oct 2019
Published online: 15 Apr 2020 *

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