Design and parameter optimization of community bins based on evaporative cooling

Area of Science:

• Environmental Engineering
• Agricultural Technology Integration
• Waste Management Systems

Background:

• Perishable kitchen waste in community bins generates unpleasant odors during summer due to decomposition.
• Existing waste management systems lack effective odor control, particularly in warmer climates.
• Agricultural cooling technologies offer potential solutions for odor mitigation in urban environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and evaluate a community bin incorporating a fan-pad cooling mechanism.
• To analyze the cooling performance of the developed system using computational fluid dynamics (CFD).
• To optimize system parameters for maximum temperature reduction in community bins.

Main Methods:

• Development of a community bin prototype with an integrated fan-pad cooling system.
• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations to analyze temperature distribution under various conditions.
• Box-Behnken Design (BBD) and regression analysis to optimize installation height of the wet curtain and fan, and distance between the trash can and wet curtain.
• Field testing to validate simulation results.

Main Results:

• Simulations predicted an optimized average temperature of 24.82 °C within the community bin.
• Field tests confirmed the simulation accuracy, with a maximum relative error of 1.54%.
• The average temperature in the bin remained within 0.5 °C of the simulated values during testing.

Conclusions:

• The fan-pad cooling system is effective in reducing temperatures within community bins, mitigating odors from rotting waste.
• The interdisciplinary integration of agricultural cooling technology into waste management offers a novel and energy-efficient solution.
• This research provides a new approach for designing and applying effective sanitation collection apparatus.