[HN Gopher] Japanese biomass venture using microorganisms to tac...
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Japanese biomass venture using microorganisms to tackle waste
disposal
Author : fagnerbrack
Score : 70 points
Date : 2023-06-17 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mainichi.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (mainichi.jp)
| [deleted]
| gardenfelder wrote:
| The term "biomass digestion"refers to an anaerobic process of
| reducing biomass to, among other things, "biogas". There are
| power generation plants based on that concept. [1] is a
| collection of paper abstracts on that topic. The linked piece
| does not give enough information to determine what, really,is
| going on with their process, but it's hard to rule out the notion
| that their process might be liberating biogas.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-
| microbio...
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| And if it is this is important as methane is a potent
| greenhouse gas.
|
| If the bacteria used in the process are obligate aerobes this
| would encourage the carbon dioxide route. This would also be
| the case if the bacteria were selected or engineered to
| preferentially produce carbon dioxide.
|
| But regardless, the waste put in to the bin will have its own
| bacteria too. So if any of those are methanogens then it would
| be especially important to keep the company's bacteria up to
| date ("Fresh bacteria are added every three months for quality
| control."), and/or to ensure good air flow through the waste
| bin.
| [deleted]
| m3kw9 wrote:
| " The company supplies bacteria that can process 98 percent of
| organic waste into water and carbon dioxide in just 24 hours,
| eliminating the need to turn it into compost, which is often not
| put to use. Fresh bacteria are added every three months for
| quality control."
|
| Sounds good but I sense a lot of gotchas like where will water
| go, smell, clean up, does it work in subzero
| jbm wrote:
| > eliminating the need to turn it into compost, which is often
| not put to use
|
| I am skeptical about this part of the explanation.
|
| We have strict limits on the amount of compost we can take from
| our city composting plant. Is this a real problem?
| qup wrote:
| In my city, you can get as much as you'd like for free. We're
| not a very big/dense city.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Now just do it with plastic!
|
| Isn't this just the same thing that happens with sewage plants.
| In the anaerobic digester before the bardenpho phase?
| rcme wrote:
| Why would you want to do this with plastic? Food decomposes
| into methane and CO2. Methane is bad from a climate change
| perspective. If you can convert food to purely CO2, then you
| can improve greenhouse gas emissions. It's even better if you
| can capture the CO2. Plastic, on the other hand, does not
| readily decompose into CO2. If you were to put it through a
| process that decomposes it, you would make greenhouse gas
| emissions worse.
| burnished wrote:
| Because the ocean is filled with it and the way it degrades
| causes it to become very small and ingested by sea
| creatures and concentrate up the food chain with
| deleterious effects for all involved.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Plastic requires specific bacteria that can digest it. Still
| pretty early days for that.
|
| It would be easier to reduce plastic to biochar at 1000C and
| bury it in farm fields or underground.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| From the article: Waste deposited in the boxes will decompose
| in a day meaning that, unlike regular compost, they will not
| produce any unpleasant odors, she said.
|
| It doesn't seem to answer your other "gotchas".
| wonderwonder wrote:
| If it produces Carbon dioxide is it not doing the same thing as
| just burning it?
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Yes but as it does not come from fossil fuel, its impact on the
| total amount of carbon dioxide currently in the surface is
| neutral. It's not a panacea but it's better than using
| extracted gas and is a way to bridge the gap between the
| current situation and one where we have enough clean energy.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| To whoever downvoted the parent comment (yes, I see that the
| comment doesn't address the article):
|
| When it comes to organic waste it's basically always going to
| convert to carbon gases, unless you're burying it in a peat
| bog or something of that nature. At least here the conversion
| is in a controlled manner that theoretically allows capture,
| as well as being conversion into carbon dioxide instead of
| carbon monoxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and various other
| gases that have sundry externalities, including greenhouse
| effects.
|
| Additionally, those microbes can often be used directly as
| chemical factories (or at least a bunch of scientists are
| working on this, with some production plants already in use).
| So the waste isn't being converted to carbon dioxide, it's
| being converted to inputs directly used for manufacturing.
| While this particular product isn't doing this, it might be
| adaptable for the purposes at some point.
| mchannon wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| When you exercise, are you burning calories? Yes.
|
| Are you literally burning calories, as through combustion the
| way most people understand it? No.
|
| I guess a way to look at this would be akin to community trash
| fires that are sub-combustion temperature. Yay, now we don't
| have to truck it 100km to the incinerator, we can just burn it
| in the village square.
|
| Composting is really challenging because a number of waste
| products, from citrus to inorganic or hybrid-inorganic garbage,
| can ruin the compost process and compost product. If someone
| leaves a metal nail in the compost pile and someone else later
| plants potatoes in it, that nail could end up in your mouth
| after a potato grows around it.
| balaji1 wrote:
| > potato grows around it
|
| That's insane. And by the same process, does
| plastic/microplastic in compost/soil, end up in
| fruits/veggies?
| mooooooooooooo wrote:
| My semi-educated guess is that micro plastics wind up
| within the plant via nutrient uptake. No idea how a nail
| ends up in a potato.
| eric-hu wrote:
| Why is citrus to be avoided in composting? A quick Google
| says that's a myth, but this is the first I've heard of it
| either way.
|
| https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/composting/ingredients/citr.
| ..
| 13th_yc_acct wrote:
| You shouldn't put citrus in a vermicompost bin because the
| worms can't eat it (right away, at any rate). I haven't
| heard that you can't compost citrus in a regular compost
| pile however. May be people getting mixed up around
| different types of composting.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I assume that it's just like with meat, which lowers the
| pH of the compost, which in turn is problematic if the
| plants using it later on have specific requirements in
| this regard.
| colechristensen wrote:
| > The company supplies bacteria that can process 98 percent of
| organic waste into water and carbon dioxide in just 24 hours
|
| Uh, there's this new technology... "fire" which will do exactly
| the same thing considerably more quickly. Maybe I should create a
| startup and have chatgpt generate marketing material about how
| burning your garbage is environmentally sound.
|
| Either this article is bad or the tech is not at all reasonable.
| You want compost because it fixes carbon. Put it in a landfill
| and you have carbon storage. Spread it on the ground and you're
| building soil. It's never "wasted".
| fbdab103 wrote:
| The intention is that consumers can do this at their home.
| Neighbors get a little unruly when I start fires to burn my
| leftovers.
| 13th_yc_acct wrote:
| Sounds like your understanding of biology is maybe not as good
| as your code skills. This is a pretty ignorant shitpost. Is
| somebody missing reddit?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Fire creates a ton of other gases, and particles with health
| effects on respiratory animals and plants. Whatever you think
| about carbon dioxide, it's far better than an equivalent amount
| of nitrous oxide.
|
| You want compost for growing things, not because it fixes
| carbon. It doesn't fix carbon, it provides nutrients for plant
| life (and some animals such as flies and worms). Some organic
| matter in a landfill will fossilize, but some of it will also
| turn into methane, which is typically seen as worse than carbon
| dioxide for the environment. And, of course, it has to be
| transported there through fossil fuel using trucks. It uses a
| lot less fuel to transport a packet of bacteria to waste than
| to transport waste.
| colechristensen wrote:
| What elements do you think make up the bulk of compost? The
| dry mass is indeed mostly carbon. What do you think happens
| to the nitrogen in plant matter digested by these bacteria?
| It's either coming off as nitrogen gases or magically
| disappearing.
|
| If you use the right tone apparently you can make anything
| seem environmentally friendly.
|
| Composting creates solid carbon which can be used in
| agriculture, amended to soil, or just buried thereby keeping
| carbon out of the air which is the entire idea of reversing
| global warming trends. CO2 is CO2 however it got to be that
| way. "Equivalent amount of nitrous oxide" there's no such
| issue, plant matter is made of mostly carbon, the nitrogen
| isn't there to be anywhere near equivalent and comes out
| anyway regardless of if you burned or completely metabolized
| it with some bacteria.
|
| The lack of critical thinking is very frustrating.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > What do you think happens to the nitrogen in plant matter
| digested by these bacteria?
|
| My first guess is that it's being kept as, or converted
| into, amino acids for use in protein synthesis by the
| bacteria.
|
| > thereby keeping carbon out of the air
|
| For some of it, yes. However the production, and
| transportation of compost if it can't be used on site
| (possible in Japan), puts carbon into the air. I don't know
| how this balances out.
|
| > The lack of critical thinking is very frustrating.
|
| Critical thinking should go into study design and
| interpretation, but it doesn't hold a candle to actually
| doing a full lifecycle analysis. Is this technology better
| or worse for the environment than the status quo? We don't
| have enough information to determine that.
| superchroma wrote:
| The japanese also have a coagulant made from mundane simple
| ingredients that creates a floating slime from contaminants in
| water, iirc called Polyglu, which can be used to purify large
| volumes of it quickly.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| same as my gut!
|
| I think it's cool that small exoskeleton-based invertebrates
| (like ticks) also have this kind of relation with unicellular
| lifeforms.
| stevenpetryk wrote:
| ticks are arachnids, not insects :)
| [deleted]
| vasco wrote:
| > "I want environmental protection to be a part of everyday life,
| not just something that big companies and entities with lots of
| money and time do," said Suno Nishiyama, 35, founder of Komham.
|
| Ok so you're going for feel-good rather than effectiveness. One
| optimizes by starting from the biggest contributors, not "every
| little bit counts" distractions.
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(page generated 2023-06-17 23:00 UTC)