[USCC] Food waste composting

[Steve Diver]

Thanks for sharing your website with equipment and
technical information on food waste composting
and rotary drum in-vessel composting.

http://masstech.pl/index_ang.html

The rotary drum composters are an excellent tool
for quickly bioprocessing food wastes.

In my experience I don't normally refer to the
material as compost until it has also gone through
a curing period.  

But I hear rotary drum compost people say that the
pre-digested material coming out of the back end of
a rotary drum mixer is "compost."  Surely it has undergone
microbial digestion, but is not finished compost until it
has been stacked and cured for ~ 45 - 60 days to
allow for humification.

It has certainly been partially digested and partially
stablized, so it has achieved the primary goal of
stabilizing highly putrescent organic wastes.   It is
a great tool for many reasons, and would love to get
more institutional food locations set up with these.

Feel free to share your thoughts and experience.

All the best,

Steve Diver
http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/farmcompost.html

>I did experience this situation after having extensive no aeration period in
>our KWM100 (see www.masstech.pl) due to power failure and freight of the
>unit half full for few days. What we actually got was a nasty sugar beet
>like silage with
>smell like vinegar or old winery. We had lots of vegetables like beets and
>orange pills , typical hotel food waste with lots of sugar containing
>components.
>As long as we do not allow anaerobic conditions for extended time it does
>not happens.
>The only way to get out of the sour condition was to empty the vessel and
>start again. Adding KOH diod not help. We had pH around 4,5 and terrible
>smell even though we areated intensively.
>Adding extra wood shavings and chips  didn't help either. We had exatly the
>same situation as you did. Now after reloading fresh material we have no
>problems for 2 months of continues operation in a very sensitive area - a
>large hotel in the town centre.
>
>Andrew
>
>
>  
>