[USCC] Plywood Sawdust in Compost

[dmhill@aol.com]

 Jeff,

At the Baltimore City Composting Facility, we used between 1,000 and 1,500 cyd.s of ground pallet wood per week as a bulking agent in our biosolids composting mix. When we changed suppliers, although disallowed by our product spec.s, a small amount (<5%) of plywood and OSB would invariably show-up in our loads. At first, we were concerned and did a lot of formaldehyde, by-product and VOC-specific testing of the finished compost. Results were always "none detectable". I suspect that if we had significant percentages of wood containing formaldehydes, test results may have been different or at high enough concentrations, would arrest the composting process. My understanding is that, at our level of concentration and in the presence of moisture, heat and microbes, the aldehydes break down and volatilize into off-gasses.


 


 David Hill


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Ziegenbein <jziegenbein at ieua.org>
To: compost at mailman.cloudnet.com
Sent: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 1:36 pm
Subject: [USCC] Plywood Sawdust in Compost










Sawdust from plywood for composting

Does anyone have experience using plywood sawdust for carbon as a small
percentage of a compost recipe? I am not sure how formaldehydes may
affect finished products in small doses. 

Jeff Ziegenbein

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