Carnival biohitech food waste digesters

[jimbo5544]

https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/environmental-health/carnival-corp-orders-500000-biohitech-food-waste-digesters

[Saint Greg]

[hurricane0226]

Nice lol

[chengkp75]

Nothing really new here, our company tried out a couple of these digesters about 7-8 years ago.  Seems like this is Carnival's solution to plastic mixed with food waste, reduce the food waste to a liquid and then most likely send it through a strainer to catch the undigested plastic.  Though if they are taking the food waste from the centralized disposal system, any plastic that made it into the disposal will be ground up small enough to get through most strainers.

 

Looked at the company website, the largest model they offer handles 1.1 metric tons of food per day, while a cruise ship produces 8-12 metric tons per day, so they'll need multiple units on each ship.  The system apparently has some analytic feature that "categorizes" the waste digested so the ship can "minimize" the amount of food waste generated.  Haven't seen how they do this, it's a video and can't watch that on the ship, I'll look at it when I get home.

[skridge]

9 hours ago, Saint Greg said:

Brilliant.

[ontheweb]

12 hours ago, Saint Greg said:

 

Definitely a low tech solution. LOL

[sparks1093]

On 10/24/2020 at 5:27 AM, chengkp75 said:

Nothing really new here, our company tried out a couple of these digesters about 7-8 years ago.  Seems like this is Carnival's solution to plastic mixed with food waste, reduce the food waste to a liquid and then most likely send it through a strainer to catch the undigested plastic.  Though if they are taking the food waste from the centralized disposal system, any plastic that made it into the disposal will be ground up small enough to get through most strainers.

 

Looked at the company website, the largest model they offer handles 1.1 metric tons of food per day, while a cruise ship produces 8-12 metric tons per day, so they'll need multiple units on each ship.  The system apparently has some analytic feature that "categorizes" the waste digested so the ship can "minimize" the amount of food waste generated.  Haven't seen how they do this, it's a video and can't watch that on the ship, I'll look at it when I get home.

That does bring up an interesting question (to me anyway, others may not be interested) but what do the law and regulations actually require for plastics- is it zero tolerance for any plastic to discharged overboard in any way (or any size) or is there room for error on the part of each ship?

[Organized Chaos]

In case anyone was as curious as I was, here's their description:

 

• Simply add food waste throughout the day. The Digester can process most food items with no grinding or pre-processing required.
• Aerobic digestion technology uses a proprietary blend of microorganisms to naturally break down food waste into liquid form.
• Once food waste is completely broken down it is safely discharged as wastewater through any standard sewer line. Complete diversion from landfill.

This is how it starts. First they make robot stomachs. Next thing you know...hungry Terminators.

 

[chengkp75]

1 hour ago, Organized Chaos said:

In case anyone was as curious as I was, here's their description:

 

• Simply add food waste throughout the day. The Digester can process most food items with no grinding or pre-processing required.
• Aerobic digestion technology uses a proprietary blend of microorganisms to naturally break down food waste into liquid form.
• Once food waste is completely broken down it is safely discharged as wastewater through any standard sewer line. Complete diversion from landfill.

This is how it starts. First they make robot stomachs. Next thing you know...hungry Terminators.

 

Simply a septic tank.  Aerobic bacteria do work faster than the anaerobic ones in a septic tank, though.  Down south in the US, aerobic septic tanks, with an air compressor, are common.

[sanmarcosman]

1 hour ago, Organized Chaos said:

This is how it starts. First they make robot stomachs. Next thing you know...hungry Terminators.

 

It's still preferable to Soylent Green 😉 

[cruiseSEA52]

The last time I was at a Carnival buffet, given the piles of food a few select customers would consume, I would have thought that Carnival could just "hire" them and save the money on a digester.

[chengkp75]

10 hours ago, sparks1093 said:

That does bring up an interesting question (to me anyway, others may not be interested) but what do the law and regulations actually require for plastics- is it zero tolerance for any plastic to discharged overboard in any way (or any size) or is there room for error on the part of each ship?

Zero tolerance.