Wearing adult diapers just got a whole lot cooler — a Japanese company called Super Faith has developed a miraculous system that turns used diapers into a clean fuel source in about 24 hours. The elderly care industry in Japan is growing and along with it the number of disposable adult diapers. Super Faith has figured out a way to divert the smelly waste from the landfill and use it for a cleaner cause.
Apparently the transformation from diaper to energy source is easy as pie. You simply place the bag of dirty diapers in the top of the machine and close it up. Once set it motion it pulverizes, sanitizes and dries the material in the diapers and then forms it into small pellets. The pellets are dry, odorless and contain 5000 kcal of heat per kilogram and are meant to be used in biomass heating and electricity systems.
Super Faith — we’re wondering if this is some sort of “lost in translation” name — has reportedly installed two SFD systems at a hospital in Tokyo’s Machida area. Each is capable of turning 700 pounds of used diapers — and everything they hold — into fuel every day. It seems the system could be used for children’s diapers as well, but Super Faith is pretty set on the adult market. With the amount of adult diapers rising each year in Japan this is a great green solution to the dirty disposal problems they are facing.
+ Super Faith
Via CNET
why only ADULT diapers? why can this not also use baby diapers?
I don’t know the numbers but I’m guessing that there are exponentially more baby diapers than there are adult diapers.
Perhaps Japan just has a bunch more infantilists/diaper lovers.
A few ideas on why they might be focusing on Adult diapers for now:
1) They are aiming these devices at hospitals and nursing homes which will generate a large volume of diapers per day and which may be able to use the generated fuel to run their own power plants, or at the very least, reduce the cost of their waste management by reducing output. If you targeted infant diapers you would need people at home to keep all of their diapers in separate trash and then bring them into to be processed. Home users aren’t going to buy their own processing system, and probably aren’t going to gather up and bring their diapers in elsewhere unless they are paid.
2) More people maybe going with cloth diapers for infants (but I’ll admit I don’t know how popular those are in Japan). I can’t say I’ve ever seen commercially produced cloth diapers for adults.
3) Adult diapers are probably going to have a much higher ratio of biomass vs plastic and inorganics than infant diapers. The key ingredient here is the biomass – not the diaper, and an adult is going to generate more solid waste per day just based on diet.
4) Infants tend to use diapers for a shorter period of time than invalids.
Sounds like a portable model would be good for homes with diaper wearing children. The converted energy could be sold or used.
What is the net energy gain for this?
For an aging Europe, this seems like just the thing. The market for retirement homes/hospitals makes sense but then the labor and delivery ward is likely just as busy though the resident turnaround is much greater.
There is also a company in the UK (http://www.knowaste.com/) that I read about back in December 2009 who is doing something similar with infant diapers.
In Japan the machine invented by Super Faith will convert wastes like adult diapers into fuel energy. Nice to hear such innovative things!