4 ms·

Is the next step to breed and harvest the bacteria? And use that to just break down the styrofoam?

singron 6y ago
I don't know about industrial processes involving bacteria, but the mealworms might be providing a lot of value. First they chew up the styrofoam, and then they provide an environment (pH, nutrients, enzymes) for the bacteria to be effective. Mealworms are also fairly easy to breed. If you isolated the bacteria, you might need to provide those other functions in an alternative way that's more cost effective than putting some worms in a bucket.
- abiogenesis 6y ago
  True, but at industrial volumes it might be more space/cost/time effective to directly use the bacteria, combined with a mechanical or chemical pre-processing step.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  You don't buy fire, you buy a furnace. The mealworms really are the functional tool here, even if the bacteria is what's doing the work.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    It’s gonna be quite some time before we can make better bioreactors than nature.
    - simonh 6y ago
      Tell that to the brewing and cheese industries.
      - andruc 6y ago
        Each of which being thousands of years old.
      - hinkley 6y ago
        Tricks that work for airborne yeasts don't necessarily work for microbes that like digestive tracts.
- samstave 6y ago
  Would you need to feed the mealworms anything other than just styrofoam? i.e. can you just have a giant vat of mealworms that you through styrofoam into?
  - salamanderman 6y ago
    My recollection of the original stanford writeup was that you actually couldn't feed the worms anything else. If given any options, they picked styrofoam last.
ars 6y ago
If you already have the styrofoam in one area it's way way way way more efficient to just burn it. The only benefit of the mealworms is they go and find the styrofoam on their own.
- eatbitseveryday 6y ago
  How are you defining efficiency? Time to “disappear” the styrofoam? If yes, that’s not the problem to solve here. Health concerns are to be reduced from used styrofoam. Burning reacts it with air, and as another has commented, that produces harmful byproducts. Decomposing into CO2 (perhaps which can be captured) and manure is perhaps a better alternative?
  - ars 6y ago
    > Burning reacts it with air, and as another has commented, that produces harmful byproducts. It does not. Burning in an incinerator is completely clean and releases only water and CO2. If you burn it badly you can make smoke, so don't do that. Also, it does not make manure, that's false info. It makes CO2 and water, nothing else, even with mealworms.
    - eatbitseveryday 6y ago
      > It does not. Burning in an incinerator is completely clean and releases only water and CO2. If you burn it badly you can make smoke, so don't do that. I suppose I should have been more careful with my terms - "burning" was meant as a layman's "making fire" rather than in a controlled process within an incinerator as you mentioned. If this is clean, why are people so motivated to look for alternatives for its disposal, giving up and resorting to landfill? Is incineration cost-prohibitive? Or is the transport to the incinerators inefficient?
      - ars 6y ago
        Because people are not rational and incineration "seems" dirty somehow, even though it is - by far - the mostly environmentally friendly way to deal with plastic. Far outclassing recycling. It just looks bad, and recycling is about feeling good, not the environment. Incineration not only disposes of the plastic, it also gives you back the energy embodied in the raw material used to make it. Then you can avoid burning some other oil, and use that other oil to make fresh plastic. You can think of it as recycling with extra steps :)
numpad0 6y ago
But the byproduct is CO2, so without some math we don’t know if it’s better than burning and/or burying the foam
- ffhhj 6y ago
  The danger from Styrofoam comes when the smoke from burning it releases harmful amounts of PAH (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons). According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, it is known that PAH stays in the environment for years; has been linked to short-term symptoms like eye irritation, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and confusion, and long-term symptoms like kidney and liver damage and cataracts. https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=120&tid=25 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=120&tid=25

I don't know about industrial processes involving bacteria, but the mealworms might be providing a lot of value. First they chew up the styrofoam, and then they provide an environment (pH, nutrients, enzymes) for the bacteria to be effective. Mealworms are also fairly easy to breed. If you isolated the bacteria, you might need to provide those other functions in an alternative way that's more cost effective than putting some worms in a bucket.

abiogenesis 6y ago
True, but at industrial volumes it might be more space/cost/time effective to directly use the bacteria, combined with a mechanical or chemical pre-processing step.
Waterluvian 6y ago
You don't buy fire, you buy a furnace. The mealworms really are the functional tool here, even if the bacteria is what's doing the work.
- hinkley 6y ago
  It’s gonna be quite some time before we can make better bioreactors than nature.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Tell that to the brewing and cheese industries.
    - andruc 6y ago
      Each of which being thousands of years old.
    - hinkley 6y ago
      Tricks that work for airborne yeasts don't necessarily work for microbes that like digestive tracts.
samstave 6y ago
Would you need to feed the mealworms anything other than just styrofoam? i.e. can you just have a giant vat of mealworms that you through styrofoam into?
- salamanderman 6y ago
  My recollection of the original stanford writeup was that you actually couldn't feed the worms anything else. If given any options, they picked styrofoam last.

ars 6y ago

If you already have the styrofoam in one area it's way way way way more efficient to just burn it. The only benefit of the mealworms is they go and find the styrofoam on their own.

eatbitseveryday 6y ago
How are you defining efficiency? Time to “disappear” the styrofoam? If yes, that’s not the problem to solve here. Health concerns are to be reduced from used styrofoam. Burning reacts it with air, and as another has commented, that produces harmful byproducts. Decomposing into CO2 (perhaps which can be captured) and manure is perhaps a better alternative?
- ars 6y ago
  > Burning reacts it with air, and as another has commented, that produces harmful byproducts. It does not. Burning in an incinerator is completely clean and releases only water and CO2. If you burn it badly you can make smoke, so don't do that. Also, it does not make manure, that's false info. It makes CO2 and water, nothing else, even with mealworms.
  - eatbitseveryday 6y ago
    > It does not. Burning in an incinerator is completely clean and releases only water and CO2. If you burn it badly you can make smoke, so don't do that. I suppose I should have been more careful with my terms - "burning" was meant as a layman's "making fire" rather than in a controlled process within an incinerator as you mentioned. If this is clean, why are people so motivated to look for alternatives for its disposal, giving up and resorting to landfill? Is incineration cost-prohibitive? Or is the transport to the incinerators inefficient?
    - ars 6y ago
      Because people are not rational and incineration "seems" dirty somehow, even though it is - by far - the mostly environmentally friendly way to deal with plastic. Far outclassing recycling. It just looks bad, and recycling is about feeling good, not the environment. Incineration not only disposes of the plastic, it also gives you back the energy embodied in the raw material used to make it. Then you can avoid burning some other oil, and use that other oil to make fresh plastic. You can think of it as recycling with extra steps :)

numpad0 6y ago

But the byproduct is CO2, so without some math we don’t know if it’s better than burning and/or burying the foam

ffhhj 6y ago
The danger from Styrofoam comes when the smoke from burning it releases harmful amounts of PAH (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons). According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, it is known that PAH stays in the environment for years; has been linked to short-term symptoms like eye irritation, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and confusion, and long-term symptoms like kidney and liver damage and cataracts. https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=120&tid=25 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=120&tid=25