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Japanese biomass venture using microorganisms to tackle waste disposal

96 points by fagnerbrack 3y ago

gardenfelder 3y ago
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-microbiology/anaerobic-digestion https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbio...
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    [deleted]
m3kw9 3y ago
“ 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
- gonzo41 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
    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.
- jbm 3y ago
  > 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 3y ago
    In my city, you can get as much as you'd like for free. We're not a very big/dense city.
wonderwonder 3y ago
If it produces Carbon dioxide is it not doing the same thing as just burning it?
- mchannon 3y ago
  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.
  - eric-hu 3y ago
    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/citrus-peels-compost.htm https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/composting/ingredients/citr...
    - 13th_yc_acct 3y ago
      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 3y ago
        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.
  - 3y ago
colechristensen 3y ago
> 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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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.
superchroma 3y ago
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.
- syockit 3y ago
  In fact, when I read the title of this submission, I thought it was related to Polyglu.
BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
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 3y ago
  ticks are arachnids, not insects :)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
vasco 3y ago
> "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.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]

96 points by fagnerbrack 3y ago

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-microbiology/anaerobic-digestion https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbio...

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
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 3y ago
  [deleted]

m3kw9 3y ago

“ 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

gonzo41 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
  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.
jbm 3y ago
> 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 3y ago
  In my city, you can get as much as you'd like for free. We're not a very big/dense city.

wonderwonder 3y ago

If it produces Carbon dioxide is it not doing the same thing as just burning it?

mchannon 3y ago
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.
- eric-hu 3y ago
  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/citrus-peels-compost.htm https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/composting/ingredients/citr...
  - 13th_yc_acct 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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.
- 3y ago

colechristensen 3y ago

> 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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.

superchroma 3y ago

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.

syockit 3y ago
In fact, when I read the title of this submission, I thought it was related to Polyglu.

BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago

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 3y ago
ticks are arachnids, not insects :)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

vasco 3y ago

> "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.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]