Optimization of Feed Components to Improve Hermetia illucens Growth and Development of Oil Extractor to Produce Biodiesel

Abstract

HIL are useful in agriculture because they can be used as feed for livestock or fertilizer and can bioconvert organic wastes, such as food waste and human and animal manure to usable fertilizer. In addition, HIL are being studied as a source of biodiesel because of their high-fat content. However, their use for biodiesel production has not been fully adopted. Here, the results showed that survival, weight gains, and total dried weight were significantly enhanced when HIL were fed dried-food waste (DFW)/chicken manure (CM). Furthermore, increased weight gain was observed in HIL fed DFW containing 5 mL waste cooking oil (WCO) per 100 g and 1.2% (v/w) fermented effective microorganism (F-EM). Based on these results, we prepared experimental feeds containing DFW, CM, WCO, and F-EM to establish an optimal feed for biodiesel production. We found that FT-1-2, a feed prepared with 60 g DFW, 40 g CM, 2 mL WCO, and 0.8% F-EM (v/w), significantly enhanced fat content, weight gain, and total dried weight of HIL. Our results indicate FT-1-2 is a suitable feed to breed HIL for biodiesel production. We then developed an automatic oil extractor for biodiesel production. The yield of the oil extractor was higher than that of solvent extraction. The study shows FT-1-2 is an optimal HIL feed for biodiesel production and that the developed oil extractor is useful for the extraction of crude oil from HIL and for the harvesting of defatted HIL frass for livestock feed and fertilizer. Taken together, we established an optimized low-cost feed for HIL breeding and developed an automatic oil extractor for the production of biodiesel from HIL.

Welfare considerations for farming black soldier flies, Hermetia illucens (Diptera: Stratiomyidae): a model for the insects as food and feed industry

“…Substrates may be treated to improve heterogeneity and nutrient composition by mixing them with other substrates (glucose, plant-based oils, soybean curd residue, and restaurant wastes have all been used; Li et al (2015), Rehman et al (2017b), Vogel et al (2018), Zheng et al (2012)). While 100% chicken manure led to only 35% survival, adding just 20% dried food waste rescued survival to nearly 100% (Lee et al, 2021). Similarly, mixing horse and sheep manure with vegetable waste improved survival by 11% (although the treatments were not statistically different) and increased final larval mass (Julita et al, 2018).…”

“…BSF larvae are reared for their incredible biomass conversion abilities, including of organic waste (Cicková et al, 2015;Lalander et al, 2015), as well as their favourable nutritional composition for feeding livestock and exotic pets. BSF larvae may also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and noxious volatile organic compounds associated with waste decomposition (Beskin et al, 2018;Pang et al, 2020;Popa and Green, 2012) and are being explored as a source of biodiesel (Lee et al, 2021), a protein source to feed a growing human population (Hopkins et al, 2021), a way to improve waste management (Banks et al, 2013), and a mechanism of economic growth in developing nations (Chia et al, 2019).…”

Edible insects: non-food and non-feed industrial applications

“…Biodiesel is often produced by the enzymatic transesterification of oil or fat with methanol (Wong et al, 2020), and it has been produced using different insects, mostly BSFL (Surendra et al, 2016), but also the yellow mealworm (Lee et al, 2021a;Wang et al, 2017;Zheng et al, 2013), and the palm weevil Rhynchophorus phoenicis (Tangka et al, 2020). Different organic side streams are used, but manure is also an interesting substrate (Lee et al, 2021b;Li et al, 2011).…”

Genetic diversity and organic waste degrading capacity of Hermetia illucens from the evergreen forest of the Equatorial Choco lowland

“…If processed, the larvae are dried and ground into a high-quality, sustainable meal to replace conventional protein sources for food and animal feed, most commonly soybean meal and fish meal ( Giannetto et al, 2020 ; Hartinger et al, 2022 ). Another application is to extract fat from larvae and apply this subproduct as soy oil replacement for animal supplements ( Kim et al, 2022 ), personal care products such as shampoo, detergent, and soap ( Franco et al, 2022 ), and biodiesel production ( Surendra et al, 2016 ; Lee, Yun & Goo, 2021 ). In addition, insect’s frass stores valuable nutrients to serve as soil fertilizer ( Liu, Wang & Yao, 2019 ; Lopes, Yong & Lalander, 2022 ).…”