Food waste: energy source

Research indicates that the waste of food in residences of Brazilian families is due to the population’s habit of enjoying preparing and serving food in large quantities, as well as the lack of custom in the use of stalks and leaves of vegetables and throwing in the trash. Samples used in this research (A1) consisted of a mixture of diverse natural foods crushed in a blender. A2 is formed by the same constituents of food and the same mass; in this case, the food was cut into 0.5 cm in length. After oven drying at 70 °C, they were triturated in the crusher and sieved. The objective of this research was to verify the thermal behavior of two samples of food residues, with the identification of the gas released during the FTIR heating and the determination of the kinetic parameters by the Wanjun–Donghua modified method, as well as the determination of the higher heating value. The thermal behavior of the samples was different; A2 presented thermal degradation with well-defined peaks, which did not occur with A1 shown by DTG. The mean activation energies were, respectively, 130.0 kJ and 75.4 kJ, and the heats involved in the burning of A1 and A2 were 20.46 and 14.96 kJ g−1, and differences in the behavior of A1 A2 were due to the way of the sample preparation. The HHV compared with other matrices indicates good energetic properties. The hygroscopicity test indicates that A1 and A2 were equal around 7%.