E-nose for Food Waste Management (ARD/301)

HK Daily food waste is about 3600 tonnes, and 93% of it goes to the landfill. It then makes up a third of our trash – the largest category – taking up Hong Kong’s limited landfill space. Alternatively, recycled food waste goes to: animal feeds, flower soils, or waste-to-energy plant. To make the above recycling process more effective, the food waste must be sorted appropriately: e.g., meat vs vegetable. Therefore, the emerging smart garbage bin with portable and affordable sensors in sorting the food waste is demanded. Particularly, there has been no such sensors available to distinguish the meat-rich food waste and the vege-rich food waste. In this project, we will construct E-nose with miniature metal oxide sensor array and make it a sensitive and selective gas sensor for food waste inspections. We will develop the algorithm in operating the E-nose to inspect food waste to evaluate the contents of food waste, e.g., meat vs vegetable. We will Install the above E-nose and the embedded software in the smart garbage bin for food waste collection and sorting. Appropriate food waste sorting will then improve the efficiency of food waste recycling process. It is anticipated that, smart garbage bin with food waste sorting sensor will be adopted at the restaurants and at the residential buildings for trials. The sorted or nutrition-evaluated food waste will be useful for the industries in making animal feeds and flower soils. The sorted or nutrition-evaluated food waste will enhance the process flow at the waste-to-energy plant in producing electricity more efficiently as well.