[USCC] Food waste composting

[A.Niv]

Hello Steve,

You are absolutely right. The biomass exiting the in-vessel composters is
not a mature, humified compost. You do need to pile it for a period of 2-4
weeks to mature. It is normally to dry when emptying too. We always suggest
to stock pile it for minimum of 2 weeks before land aplication.  In our
KWM100 (did you read this page on my url?) the situation is even more
obvious  although the residual time is 40 days under intensive aeration. We
have quite low level of C:N because except for the innitial stage we do not
add any cellulose material. But we achieve the goal of partially
deactivating and reducing the volume dramatically >90%.. This pre-mature
"compost" though burns very well and can serve as biofuel. I know the true
compost purists resist the idea of burning compost from ideological reasons
but the majority of pragmatic business people just want to get rid of the
biomass in the most direct and profitable way. With all the European
incentives resulting from Kyoto, energy generation from biofuels is at
prime.


Andrew Niv
>
> 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.
>