Cleaning of plastics by larvae
Cleaning packackging materials
The proposed innovative technical solution consists in a biological method of cleaning packaging materials from the food industry, contaminated with animal by-products such as blood, meat, animal fats residues and the like, and / or residues of food and other food industry products such as e.g. salads, mayonnaise and other biodegradable waste.
Methodology
- Larvae of vocarious insects of the order Diptera, which can use fresh or rotting organic residues of animal and / or plant origin as their only food source, are placed on the packaging materials.
- By their activity, the larvae consume organic particles, which are trapped on packaging materials made of plastics or other materials and incorporate them into their biomass.
- The larvae are not able to use the packaging materials themselves as a source of livelihood, so they become a further recyclable product.
Biological Processing Outcome
The originating product after this biological processing of contaminated packaging is thus only cleaned packaging materials and live larvae at a more advanced stage of development, which can be further used for breeding, or in another way described in the available literature.
A prerequisite for the larvae to be able to clean the contaminated packaging effectively is the physical availability of each part of the contaminated packaging for the larvae. This is ensured by the fractionation of contaminated packaging materials by cutting them into smaller parts using a cutting device.
Following fractionation, contaminated packaging is provided to larvae at various stages of their life cycle as the sole source of livelihood.
