Industrial Composting: Environmental Engineering and Facilities Management

It is increasingly being used in developed countries due to regulations controlling the amount of organic matter allowed in landfills. Treating biodegradable waste before it enters a landfill reduces global warming from fugitive methane ; untreated waste breaks down anaerobically in a landfill, producing landfill gas that contains methane , a potent greenhouse gas. On many farms, the basic composting ingredients are animal manure generated on the farm and bedding.

Straw and sawdust are common bedding materials. Non-traditional bedding materials are also used, including newspaper and chopped cardboard. The amount of manure composted on a livestock farm is often determined by cleaning schedules, land availability, and weather conditions. Each type of manure has its own physical, chemical, and biological characteristics.

Cattle and horse manures, when mixed with bedding, possess good qualities for composting. Swine manure, which is very wet and usually not mixed with bedding material, must be mixed with straw or similar raw materials. Poultry manure also must be blended with carbonaceous materials - those low in nitrogen preferred, such as sawdust or straw. Human excreta can also be added as an input to the composting process since human excreta is a nitrogen-rich organic material.

It can be either composted directly, like in composting toilets , or indirectly as sewage sludge , after it has undergone treatment in a sewage treatment plant.

Navigation menu

Urine can be put on compost piles or directly used as fertilizer. Unlike feces, urine does not attract disease-spreading flies such as houseflies or blowflies , and it does not contain the most hardy of pathogens, such as parasitic worm eggs. Urine usually does not smell for long, particularly when it is fresh, diluted, or put on sorbents. Compost can be used as an additive to soil, or other matrices such as coir and peat , as a tilth improver, supplying humus and nutrients. It provides a rich growing medium , or a porous, absorbent material that holds moisture and soluble minerals, providing the support and nutrients in which plants can flourish, although it is rarely used alone, being primarily mixed with soil , sand , grit, bark chips, vermiculite , perlite , or clay granules to produce loam.

Compost can be tilled directly into the soil or growing medium to boost the level of organic matter and the overall fertility of the soil. Compost that is ready to be used as an additive is dark brown or even black with an earthy smell. Generally, direct seeding into a compost is not recommended due to the speed with which it may dry and the possible presence of phytotoxins in immature compost that may inhibit germination, [15] [16] [17] and the possible tie up of nitrogen by incompletely decomposed lignin.

Various approaches have been developed to handle different ingredients, locations, throughput and applications for the composted product. Industrial-scale composting can be carried out in the form of in-vessel composting , aerated static pile composting , vermicomposting , or windrow composting , and takes place in most Western countries now. Vermicompost is the product or process of organic material degradation using various species of worms, usually red wigglers , white worms , and earthworms, to create a heterogeneous mixture of decomposing vegetable or food waste excluding meat, dairy, fats, or oils , bedding materials, and vermicast.

Vermicast, also known as worm castings , worm humus or worm manure, is the end-product of the breakdown of organic matter by species of earthworm.

• Balkanbeat: Meine Suche nach Patrick Leigh Fermor (German Edition).
• Andrew Murray: The Authorized Biography.
• Landfill Design, Permitting, and Construction.
• Maurizio Cattelan, autobiografia non autorizzata (Strade blu. Non Fiction) (Italian Edition);
• A Second Chance (Romances with Israeli flavors)?
• The Hudson Agency - Chicago Style.

Vermicomposting can also be applied for treatment of sewage sludge. A composting toilet collects human excreta. These are added to a compost heap that can be located in a chamber below the toilet seat. Sawdust and straw or other carbon rich materials are usually added as well. Some composting toilets do not require water or electricity; others may. If they do not use water for flushing they fall into the category of dry toilets.

Some composting toilet designs use urine diversion , others do not. When properly managed, they do not smell.

The composting process in these toilets destroys pathogens to some extent. The amount of pathogen destruction depends on the temperature mesophilic or thermophilic conditions and composting time. Composting toilets with a large composting container of the type Clivus Multrum and derivations of it are popular in United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden. They are available as commercial products, as designs for self builders or as "design derivatives" which are marketed under various names.

Bokashi is a method that uses a mix of microorganisms to cover food scraps or wilted plants to decrease smell, reduce the risk of attracting pests and increase the speed of decomposition. The technique relies on effective microorganisms.

Landfill Maintenance

These essential microbes are typically added to the food scraps using an inoculated bokashi bran. Newspaper fermented in a lactobacillus culture can be substituted for bokashi bran for a successful bokashi bucket. The first stage of bokashi preserves the ingredients in a lactic acid fermentation. The acid is a natural disinfectant, used as such in household cleaning products, so that what enters the second digestion stage is essentially free of microbial pathogens. Compost teas are defined as water extracts leached from composted materials.

Organic ingredients intended for composting can also be used to generate biogas through anaerobic digestion. This process stabilizes organic material. The residual material, sometimes in combination with sewage sludge can be treated by a composting process before selling or giving away the compost. There are process and product guidelines in Europe that date to the early s Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and only more recently in the UK and the US.

In both these countries, private trade associations within the industry have established loose standards, some say as a stop-gap measure to discourage independent government agencies from establishing tougher consumer-friendly standards. Compost is regulated in Canada [39] and Australia [40] as well.

Many countries such as Wales [41] [42] and some individual cities such as Seattle and San Francisco require food and yard waste to be sorted for composting San Francisco Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance. The advantage of this method is that little working time or effort is required from the composter and it fits in naturally with agricultural practices in temperate climates.

Disadvantages from the modern perspective are that space is used for a whole year, some nutrients might be leached due to exposure to rainfall, and disease-producing organisms and insects may not be adequately controlled.

Composting was somewhat modernized beginning in the s in Europe as a tool for organic farming. In the English-speaking world it was Sir Albert Howard who worked extensively in India on sustainable practices and Lady Eve Balfour who was a huge proponent of composting. Composting was imported to America by various followers of these early European movements by the likes of J. However, because there is significant variation in the data due to both natural variation and anomalous data points, visually assessing the trends can sometimes be difficult and subjective.

Due to former mining operations at the site, soils characterized as cut and fill and strip mine spoil occupy various portions of the site.

When the facility owners planned to expand operations, they contacted Bowser-Morner to assist them with the technical expertise in developing and implementing a program to stabilize the underground mines beneath the planned expansion areas as required by rule. You can trust Bowser-Morner for comprehensive engineering solutions for: Construction and demolition debris landfills Industrial solid waste facilities Municipal solid waste facilities Transfer stations Compost facilities Our engineers have also worked with numerous other industrial waste facilities involving paper sludge, utility ash, refinery sludge, and similar materials.

Landfill Design, Permitting, and Construction Bowser-Morner engineers specialize in the site selection and design of waste disposal facilities of all types. Site selection and evaluation Hydrogeological site investigations Waste disposal facility design Landfill permitting Construction monitoring, testing, documentation, and certification Landfill Maintenance Your waste disposal facility likely has a lifespan of 10 to 20 years or more.

Landfill maintenance and monitoring services include: Epstein is a valuable tool for the composting professional … It also includes perhaps the most comprehensive list of reference materials, which should be very helpful if the reader desires more information on a particular topic. We provide complimentary e-inspection copies of primary textbooks to instructors considering our books for course adoption.

Learn More about VitalSource Bookshelf. CPD consists of any educational activity which helps to maintain and develop knowledge, problem-solving, and technical skills with the aim to provide better health care through higher standards. It could be through conference attendance, group discussion or directed reading to name just a few examples. We provide a free online form to document your learning and a certificate for your records.

Already read this title? Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

Exclusive web offer for individuals. Environmental Engineering and Facilities Management.

Add to Wish List. Toggle navigation Additional Book Information. Summary The ultimate in recycling, composting has been in use in some form since ancient times. Designed for composting professionals and supported by extensive quality references, this book covers: