MicroWaste

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Project Sponsor: Team-Initiated

There is an excessive amount of trash circulating the world and landfills are filling up. In 2018, a USDA study found that Americans waste about a pound of food each day While a pound may seem insignificant, it quickly adds up and results in over 119 billion pounds of food wasted each year in the United States alone. Additionally, the Earth’s oil and gas deposits are being depleted at alarming rates.

MicroWaste was created to combat these issues. MicroWaste is a high-powered solid-state microwave device designed to uniformly heat food waste that will eventually be used to convert several types of waste to different forms of usable fuel. The problem with the current technology is that heating food waste creates uneven hot spots in the waste mass. In addition, the current technology does not account for the electrical changes that occur as the food waste is heating up, and therefore changing parameters such as the impedance. This causes the fuel conversion to be inefficient.

MicroWaste is a microwave oven device for the specific purpose of controlled, high temperature, uniform heating of food waste. MicroWaste is an important innovation in relation to using microwaves to create usable fuel from waste, especially since typical microwave ovens do not create fuel from food; they can only heat up food to a relatively low temperature for the everyday user. Going forward, researchers will be able to continue to develop MicroWaste into a system that uses microwaves to produce several usable fuels from many different types of waste. Eventually, this system may be able to turn plastics into pyrolytic oil. MicroWaste contributes to the search for an alternative source of clean fuel.

The primary users of MicroWaste are the researchers who will use the product to further their research in creating alternative fuels using microwaves. MicroWaste will also benefit the eventual users of this product: the general public. MicroWaste could also be used in cutting edge labs to create other types of usable fuel from other types of waste, resulting in the general public having access to alternative energy sources. The collective use of MicroWaste will benefit the planet by decreasing carbon emissions and eliminating excess trash. Aside from the environmental impacts, MicroWaste allows its users to take their food waste and turn it into a usable fuel rather than food ending up in a landfill. The uniform and high-power heating allows for a much greater power output for a given power input, a feature that is improved from commercially available microwaves. Additionally, MicroWaste also has higher heating capabilities overall than devices that are currently available. This is achieved through ensuring high-efficiency, solid-state devices as opposed to the more traditional magnetron used in microwave ovens.

MicroWaste is important for the advancement of microwave technology and the search for alternative fuel resources. The ability to easily transform the 119 billion pounds of food waste into a usable fuel could be the next step in preserving the planet, in addition to creating means of fuel in non-conventional ways.