Strange ideas about leftovers from Duy Tan University's students (MS KIM CUC)
The daily amount of leftover food of each household is not only wasted but also pollutes when it is removed. How to solve this problem is the question that troubled the FWP team to find the question, with the creation of the “Residual Food Processor”. The FWP group consists of students majoring in Mechatronics - Electronics, Duy Tan University: Nguyen Van Hoang Long, Pham Khac Minh Duc, Nguyen Thanh Hung and Nguyen Minh Huy, majoring in Business Administration). MSc Pham Ngoc Quang of the Center for Electrical and Electronic Engineering (CEE) guides.
At the Sustainable Energy Initiative Contest 2021 organized by the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA) and New Energy Nexus Vietnam, the innovation of the FWP group, although only won third place, was evaluated. very high in terms of feasibility in bringing benefits to the environment, especially for households.
The team's creation, the "FWP Leftover Food Processor", is a device that converts household food waste into bran grains that can be reused for livestock, poultry or as fertilizer. This machine once brought the group the first prize at 'Hult Prize On Cam' (Duy Tan University) to win the right to enter the final round of 'Hult Prize Impact Summit', TP. HCM. The group is also the representative of the school to bring the product to the contest "Student Start Up" organized by the Ministry of Education and Training in 2020.
Group leader Nguyen Van Hoang Long said that, on average, a household generates about 2 plates of leftover food every day. This number multiplied by the area of a neighborhood, a ward/commune per week will produce a huge amount. This amount of leftover food is mainly discarded or used for livestock and livestock to eat again, both unhygienic and potentially harmful to animals. Not to mention, pets after using this leftover food become… food for humans. In addition, in urban areas, households are not allowed to raise livestock, so the larger the amount of food left over, the more it has to be discarded. Because of this, the group advocates to design the machine so that it is compact, easy to clean and aimed at immediate users, urban households.
According to Hoang Long, the design of the machine is only about 80 cm high, the structure includes a food grinding chamber, with a capacity of about 16 kg. Just put the food into the chamber, the machine will automatically crush and remove the water, leaving only the "residue". This residue is dried again for 3 hours and again grinded as fine as a powder. This powder will be mixed with microorganisms into bran grains. The ratio of finished products is 4/1, which means that if the chamber is filled with 16 kg, the household will get 4 kg of bran.
What is the quality of this bran and how is it reused? According to the group, this type of bran is clean and can be used to raise livestock and poultry without worrying about causing intestinal diseases, both economically and hygienically. This idea, if replicated and on a large scale, could become a model for animal feed processing. People can resell this type of bran to production facilities.