Food Waste: Food waste input comes from Dining Services on campus. While the output is steady we are only able to use what they have produced as waste.
Environmental: We want to go landfill neutral across the Virginia Tech campus. This means our aim is to redirect 100% of waste to our bioreactors and send 0% for composting.
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Dining Services Collaboration: We must be able to work with Dining Services without impacting their day-to-day operations.
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Superpro Design: Our design can only be based on laboratory results, and will not be running full scale experiments due to lack of space and resources.
Time: Because the amount of food produced and wasted by dining halls is much greater during the fall and spring semesters, we aim to digest approximately 2/3 of all food waste produced weekly during semester hours and store the remainder for seasons when classes are out of session.
Location: Due to the expense and time restraints of transporting biological materials, we propose to have a digestion plant within 10 miles of campus with a storage facility capable of freezing 1/3 of weekly food wastage.
Money: This is meant to be an environmentally friendly use of Dining Services’ waste but the process must also be financially feasible. We aim for our product to cost less than $100 for a personal use and less than $1000 for a home solution.
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Payback Period: The payback period for our processing plant should be less than 7 years.
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Contamination: We need to maximize the amount of acetate producing bacteria and minimize the amount of methane producing bacteria in our digestion cultures. We aim to lose only 20% of our biomass as methane.
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Constraints
Criteria
Constraints and Criteria
Standards
When performing our design project, it is important to keep several design standards in mind to maintain safety and yield consistent results. One of our first steps of the design process was to find and adhere to the applicable design standards, listed below:
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ASTM. (2015) D5956-15: Standard Guide for Sampling Strategies for Heterogeneous Wastes. West Conshohocken, PA: ASTM Int.
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ASTM. (2015) D5681-13: Standard Terminology for Waste Management. West Conshohocken, PA: ASTM Int.
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ASTM. (2015) D4844-03: Standard Guide for Air Monitoring at Waste Management Facilities for Worker Protection. West C Conshohocken, PA: ASTM Int.
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ASTM. (2015) D4687-14: Standard Guide for General Planning of Waste Sampling. West Conshohocken, PA: ASTM Int.
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ASABE Standards. (2011). S593.1: Terminology and Definitions for Biomass Production, Harvesting and Collection, Storage, Processinog, Conversion and Utilization - Forages. St. Joseph, MI: ASABE.
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ASTM. (2015) D4447-15: Standard Guide for Disposal of Laboratory Chemicals and Samples. West Conshohocken, PA: ASTM Int.
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ASTM. (2015) E1535-93: Standard Test Method for Performance Evaluation of Anaerobic Digestion Systems. West Conshohocken, PA: ASTM Inc.
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ASTM. (2015) D3223-12:Standard Test Method for Total Mercury in Water. West Conshohocken, PA: ASTM Inc.