Designed and patented by Townsville-based company VRM, Bio-Regen grinds up food waste and mixes it with water and an inoculant containing special microbes.
James Cook University, an Australian university has become the first university in Australia to pioneer an innovative food waste disposal system known as Bio-Regen.
Designed and patented by Townsville-based company VRM, the machine grinds up food waste and mixes it with water and an inoculant containing special microbes.
The resulting liquid is left to ferment in tanks for 28 days, after which it is collected by VRM and sold to farmers as a nutrient rich bio-fertiliser.
The machine, however, cannot process all food products by the Bio-Regen system. The machine has difficulty with large quantities of cooked chicken bones and fibrous materials such as corn husks, eggshells and onion skins.
Those items and larger food waste products are processed by an alternative system known as the Groundswell.
Green waste is stored in large bays where it is sprayed with microbes and left for six months to break down and become a humus-rich top soil. The storage time enriches the product.
Using microbes to break down food waste typically produces carbon dioxide and methane, but VRM’s Gil Napper said the Bio-Regen and Groundswell addressed this issue.
Mr Napper said he expected the early buy-in of Asian farmers to spark interest from more Australian farmers and he was already in talks with several major agricultural players.
