Biofuel

A new technique for turning food waste into a source of energy uses a two step process that extracts all of the energy from the waste and does so quickly.

Researchers at Cornell University have discovered this new process to harness energy that is much more efficient than previous methods. When we typically talk about converting food waste into an energy source, it involves anaerobic digestion where bacteria slowly break down the organic matter and the resulting methane is captured and used as fuel.

Two-Step Process

The technique developed at Cornell first utilizes hydrothermal liquefaction to essentially pressure cook the food scraps to make a bio-oil that can be refined into a biofuel. The food waste that remains after removing the oil is a watery liquid.

This is fed to an anaerobic digester to convert the waste into methane over a few days. This two-step approach quickly produces a usable energy source that can be used to generate electricity or heat and doesn’t let any go to waste.