Commercial and industrial food waste drying systems
Our Gobi Food Waste Dryers are heavy-duty food waste reduction systems that can reduce the volume and weight of waste by up to 90%
This food waste dryer can be used on various sites, including offshore marine vessels where space is often at a premium, in college and university kitchens, and hotels, remote workers’ camps and larger scale processors of organic wastes to name a few.
How do food waste dryers work?
With our Gobi Dryers, material is fed into the sealed mixing chamber where it is heated, agitated, and shredded during the process and converted into a dried granular material.
Processing time takes typically 8 hours and the only by product is condensed water which goes safely to drain or can be collected for use in irrigation.
The moisture evaporation during this dehydration phase means that the operator is left with an dry, stabilised and odourless resource, which can be used as a biomass fuel, to generate heat and hot water or it can be composted using a Rocket Composter.
What are the advantages of food waste drying?
Food and organic wastes are known for their high-moisture content sometimes up to 98%, which means that biological decomposition happens much quicker than in dried-out food waste.
By drying out waste, this not only makes it easier and safer to store due to lack of biological activity, but it also reduces the risk of attracting vermin. And by reducing the weight and volume of food waste and contaminated packed wastes it significantly decreases off-site collection and disposal costs.
Also, while local infrastructure often does not accept items such as PLA and compostable tableware because of the level of plastic contamination, Gobi Dryers are able to process these streams with ease. They simply process the biodegradable items into dry powder and leave the plastics and foils to be easily separated.
The resulting material is also space-saving and odourless meaning it can be stored safely for long periods of time without degrading. This means fewer waste collections are needed reducing the amount of transport on the road, and in turn, a company’s carbon footprint too.
Our food waste drying products
BP, Algeria
Two of our G600 Gobi Dryers are in operation in the heart of the Sahara Desert – helping BP with food waste management at the workers’ canteens – situated in one of the world’s largest gas fields. At this remote location, removing the waste’s moisture is hugely beneficial, as it means it can be stored safely – even at 50°C temperatures – without putrefaction or attracting vermin.
Fred. Olsen
Our G50 Gobi Food Waste Dryer has been helping Fred. Olsen Windcarrier’s ‘Bold Tern’ jack-up vessel to convert its on-board food waste into an inert powder – meaning it now has 80% less food waste to store on the ship.
Heathrow Airport, England
In 2016, the British Airways in-flight catering facility at Colnbrook – managed and operated by DHL Envirosolutions – became the world’s first airline caterer to begin dealing with CAT1 International Catering Waste (ICW) on site. Food waste from international flights – which was previously sent to landfill – is now processed at source to create a fuel for Heathrow’s specially designed, DEFRA-approved biomass plant, which generates heat to power the site’s tray-washing systems. As a result, the facility’s waste disposal costs have been reduced, and it is less reliant on fossil fuels for heating.
Seaway Heavy Lifting, a Subsea 7 company
G100 Gobi Food Waste Dryers are helping Seaway Heavy Lifting’s offshore vessels to safely sterilise and dehydrate organic waste on-board – allowing them to store it for long periods without putrefaction.
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Here are some our most commonly asked questions…
This is one of the most common things we’re asked here at Tidy Planet, and the answer is no, they’re very different.
Dried food waste has the water evaporated out of it at a high heat, to reduce its moisture and weight by up to 90% resulting in an inert, stabilised powder, that can be used as a valuable fuel resource,
and not in the ground to grow produce.
That’s because as it hasn’t been through a complex biological transformation like compost, it’s missing in beneficial properties that aid moisture retention, soil structure, and microorganisms that benefit
the ground and help plant growth.
As a result, the composting process takes up to 14 days, while dehydration only takes one.
Any process claiming to produce compost in 24 hours isn’t producing ‘compost’ at all.
Food waste drying is a great solution for firms which simply want to reduce their off-site disposal costs quickly and decrease the amount of food waste being landfilled and don’t want to produce a compost
resource on site. However, the drying process uses more energy than composting, so has a higher carbon footprint.
VIEW OUR FOOD WASTE DEHYDRATION EQUIPMENT
VIEW NOWREAD MORE ABOUT COMPOSTING VS. DRYING
VISIT OUR FAQSYes, you can – but only under the right conditions…
As environmental awareness has grown, compostable packaging has had a surge in adoption and usage among both individuals and businesses alike.
The truth is that these sustainable, plant-based packaging alternatives are only better than their single-use counterparts if they are indeed composted, otherwise they’re simply a costlier route to landfill.
All compostable packaging is designed to break down naturally when composted, but it needs to be processed under the correct conditions – just like food or garden waste. Therefore, you need to ensure that your packaging is separated
from your general waste, and that you have a system in place which guarantees it goes to a certified composting facility, or you can do it yourself, on site!
Some packaging manufacturers have started to put collection and local composting measures in place for their products, all at a fee for the customer, but here at Tidy Planet we’re flying the flag all the way for on-site commercial composting solutions.
By having your own equipment on premises, not only can you close the loop and save on the costs and carbon emissions associated with third-party collections, but you can also create a valuable resource in the process.
MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT COMPOSTABLE PACKAGING?
Head over to our FAQs page!
It supports soil regeneration, reversing the effects of climate change and it has both environmental and financial advantages for businesses.
In a word NO!
Composting requires the natural action of microbes to breakdown the complex chemical molecules in food waste. Any equipment producing compost in 24 hrs is a heating process removing the water and simply producing dried food waste. This shouldn’t be used as a soil improver or growth medium as you would compost. In the UK after drying food waste remains classified as waste.
But don’t take our word for it, see below regulatory guidance from the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency on the subject
“Composting” is defined in the Waste Management Licensing (Scotland) Regulations 2011 (WMLR), as– “the autothermic [i.e. self-heating] and thermophilic [i.e. 40-80°C] biological decomposition and stabilisationof biodegradable waste under controlled aerobic conditions that result in a stable sanitised material that can be applied to land for the benefit of agriculture, horticulture or ecological improvement”.
Processes that do not meet the definition of composting but treat food waste using heat, chemicals or biological agents to reduce the water content or volume, may be suitable for the pre-treatment of food waste prior to its separate collection and onward transport to an authorised treatment facility, e.g. an in- vessel composting (IVC) or an anaerobic digestion (AD) facility. However the residues from such processes remain waste, are not compost and are not suitable for application to land