Zera Food Recycler

By Whirlpool Corporation

The Zera Food Recycler takes your everyday food waste and turns it into ready-to-use fertilizer within 24 hrs. Compare this to a normal outdoor compost pile that can take up to 2 weeks. Zera eliminates the need to throw away organic food scraps into the trash, where they can end up in a landfill and decompose anaerobically, creating methane gas which is 20X worse for the climate than CO2 emissions. Zera requires little maintenance and will accept nearly all kinds of food waste. It has an integrated HEPA/CO2 filter so you can keep it in your kitchen without worrying about odors.

Description of Services:

Engineering – Developed DOE to prove out composting technology and the necessary chemistry to produce good, workable compost. Owned development of 25 subsystem mechanical parts for two early round prototype builds.

3D Modeling – Created mechanical parts in ProE Wildfire.

Project Management and Delivery – Worked with US factory on two front-end prototype builds resulting in 62 total test units.

Prototyping – Assembled subsystem mechanical parts and modified prototype parts using the in-house machine shop. Led subsystem assembly teams to assemble modules for 62 test units.

Results – CES 2017 Innovation Award. Successful Indiegogo campaign.