Effective drying method in the utilization of food waste into compost materials using effective microbe (EM)

Food waste is one of the wastes that is being generated about every day. It would be a waste if the generated waste is ignored, neglected and just being disposed of without using the benefits that are in the food waste. The aim of this study is to find the best way for food waste recovery by using effective microbes (EM). There are three different parameters used in this study. The parameters are the method of drying the food wastes, the presence of Effective Microbes (EM) after the drying of food wastes and the addition of wheat pollard. An effective microbe is a combination of anaerobic microorganisms in a liquid. The effective microbe is activated by mixing the EM 1 with molasses and water with the ratio of 1:1:20 and is left for a week. Molasses is a thick liquid of sugar from the plant such as sugarcane. The food waste went through three processes for it to be recovered which are drip the food waste leaching water at the designated table, grind the food waste and lastly dry it. Before grinding, the coconut pulp was added to the food waste. The food waste is analysed based on four analyses. The four analyses are moisture content, protein analysis, E-coli analysis and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy analysis (FTIR). Moisture content was done to analyse the amount of water in the food waste by using the weight before and after the drying process. Two types of drying process were used in this study; drying by oven and conventional fan. Based on moisture content, the best drying method is by using the oven. The result shows that the moisture content is 28% when the sample dried using an oven compared to a conventional fan (51.4%). Protein analysis and E-Coli analysis are conducted to find an amount of protein and E-coli respectively in the sample. Fourier-transform infrared is an analyzing process to observe the absorption spectra of the food.