ENERGY HARVESTER SYSTEM BY USING ANAEROBIC DIGESTION AND FOOD WASTE AS FUEL

Increment of food waste has becoming a rising epidemic to the environment, economy
and social in Malaysia. Food waste production leads to the increment of number and size
of landfills in Malaysia. These landfills produce landfill gasses that consists of methane
and carbon dioxide as its main constituents, and leachate that destroy the crops that the
landfill resides. Ultimately, not only food waste generation leads to wasting precious
land, but also the emission of carbon dioxide and methane leads to climate change. This
paper proposes an alternative/solution to this problem. The proposed design is to act as a
storage system for the food waste that is generated by the consumer. The proposed
design serves the purpose of being a portable, low-cost, and easy to handle by the user
for the use of converting the food waste to biogas and nutrient rich slurry. Anaerobic
digestion is the process that is used to convert the food waste. The biogas produced by
this process is odorless, colorless and combustible. The calorific value of biogas is
similar to fossil fuels which can be used for energy conversion. In the proposed design, a
network of sensors is installed to monitor and adjust the conditions of the environment
of the storage system to optimize the conversion of food waste to biogas. The network of
sensors consists of temperature, Ph and gas sensors. The data that is collected from the
sensors are monitored by an Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller. The data is then
displayed onto an LCD display located on top of the system. The targeted audience for
this system is for any average consumer for household use, or any commercial sites such
as restaurants, hotels, factories, offices, etc.
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