The Murcia City Council launched a month before the confinement, in February of last year, the collection of organic matter in the neighborhood of La Flota, which residents had to pour into the new brown container. Just a year later, 218,000 kilos have arrived at the Cañada Hermosa waste center of this type of waste, which once ‘passed’ through the new digester of the pretreatment plant is transform into fertilizers and agricultural nutrients and food.
The use of this new container got off to a good start and in just one month the residents went from adding 300 kilos a day to 700, an amount that did not stop increasing until reaching 1,000 kilos. This new initiative was going so well that, in November, the City Council decided to place it in the supply squares of the municipality with the aim of collecting up to 1,600 kilos per day in a few weeks. They already go for 1,400.
Mechanical process
The councilors for Sustainable Mobility and Urban Agenda, Rebeca Pérez and Mercedes Bernabé, respectively, visited the Cañada Hermosa plant this Thursday to learn first-hand about the process applied to this garbage.
The technicians explained that the organic waste, after weighing it, reaches the hopper of the pretreatment plant, where it passes through the bag breaker and the magnetic separator to reach the sieve that classifies the appropriate material for its passage to the digester. Once inside, the residue is mixed with water, and through the anaerobic fermentation of microorganisms, it is degraded obtaining biogas, with a high content of methane, which can be used as fuel; struvite, an organic-mineral fertilizer; and the solid digestate, which will be used as food for the fly breeding plant. Precisely this last step will be taken in spring in a pilot plant for the breeding of black soldier fly, where it will be converted into flour with a high protein content.
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