Drying of Food Waste for Potential Use as Animal Feed

Abstract

A considerable part of food is wasted, causing investment capital loss as well as environmental pollution and health problems in humans. Indirect solar drying was applied to test the potential of drying and reusing this waste as a component of animal feed. The effect of weather changes on drying kinetics and the effective diffusion coefficient, dried feed nutritional composition, and microbiological analysis of the dried product were investigated. A convective laboratory dryer was used as a reference method. Weather conditions have a crucial effect on the use of solar drying; one sunny day with appropriate conditions can reduce the water activity of food waste to below 0.3 and moisture content to below 6%. Much better fitting of experimental and model drying curves was achieved considering sample shrinkage, applying a more complex solution of Fick’s second law combined with an optimization procedure. The studied food waste had a good combination of nutrients, such as protein, fat, and carbohydrates; however, the amount of protein in the dried food waste was found to be lower than that in regular feed, and therefore, adding a protein source is recommended. Autoclaving of fresh samples reduced the total microbial counts of dried samples by more than 50%.

Novel enzyme-fermentation process for bioconversion of restaurant food waste into isomaltooligosaccharide-and L-lactic acid-enriched animal feed

“…RFW is a putrescible organic waste that mainly consists of uneaten food and unusable leftovers (Chen et al, 2015;Garnida et al, 2022) and is associated with adverse health, socioeconomic, and environmental impacts due to its high moisture content and perishability (Ojha et al, 2020;Sobol et al, 2023). Nevertheless, RFW also contains valuable ingredients such as carbohydrates, protein, fats, vitamins, fiber, and minerals, making it a promising source of nutrients (Noori et al, 2022). Therefore, there is a critical need to recycle and resource RFW to create value from it in an ecofriendly and economical way.…”

Ukraine as a food and grain hub: Impact of science and technology development on food security in the world

“…Since the food security for people also depends on the nutritional status of livestock, the recycling of food waste into animal feed is also a promising way to rationalize using and reducing food waste (Noori et al, 2022;Sheppard and Rahimifard, 2019).…”

Environmental Impact Assessment of a Solar Drying Unit for the Transformation of Food Waste into Animal Feed

“…A solar drying pilot unit has been installed for the first time in Greece to help transform food waste into animal feed. Solar drying has been identified as a waste treatment method that is energy efficient and meets hygienic criteria [13,14]. It has been recently examined for its use in transforming, specifically, food waste into animal feed in Afghanistan [15].…”