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Thank you for sharing your success!

Actinobacter trhrive when the oxygen concentration is above 15% and the temperature is no higher than about 60 C. The critical one is oxygen, so if you can manage to keep the oxygen concentration that high in your compost, you will achieve success!

@TransformCompost Thank you!

A friend in the Yukon was working on this - Boreal Compost Enterprises.

The heat capture system that you describe is the optimal way of recovering heat energy from composting material. We have done it using a 1.5 m3 insulated bin. The one challenge is that even though the cold water at the top allows condensation of the steam from the compost, the water is not evenly distributed through the compost, and we expect to see drying at the bottom where the pipes are, and moisture content up to 75% at the surface. And we have to remember that once organic material dries, it does not wet up very well! Fun project though!

@@TransformCompost Also, if I remember well, they aerate not with fresh cold and outside dry air, but, but à big % of the same wet air, having a lever to change to find the right amount of each.. So the aerating air is actually participating in not drying / wetting it where it could otherwize loose.. Thanks for your answer !

Or a way to keep it in... Like.. Localised condensation ;)

humidify the air input....I have always thought about that idea as well, but the moisture from that air might be disproportionately added to where the inlet of the pipe is because it may be difficult to move the water through the pile like that. How much compost are you wanting to make?

Thinking about humidifying the input air requires understanding the phsychometric curve, which informs us that the water holding capacity of air goes up logarithmically with temperature. That suggests that humidifying the air may help somewhat if the input air temperature was 30 C or higher with low humidity. On the other hand, if the input air is 10 C and almost 100% humidity like we have, the air can't absorb much water.

@@TransformCompost Ok, good to know ! And what about using ultrasound humidifier in the air input, otherwise ?

@@AutoNomades Sorry, I am not familiar with ultrasound humidifiers

meh. The mykos can be added once the pile is already mature because those types of fungi don't grow unless they are near plant root exudates as far as im concerned. Bacteria are not really needed unless you intend on growing nitrogen fixing plants that require rhizobium, but most compost piles made correctly already have rhizobium in them. My biggest issue with adding these microbes is that they are likely not native to where the compost is being made and a lot of them are unnecessary (especially in non-farming operations).

@@jacobfurnish7450 thoughtful.... thank you for the response

I have never added fungi or bacterium to composting material, my preference at this time is to understand and optimize the microbes that are already there.

@@TransformCompost thanks

Yes, when I mixed this same mix more often, I reached maturity much faster. By mixing twice weekly, aerating and managing moisture , I have reached maturity in 3 weeks. Generally temperature bounces right back within hours of turning. No issue with turning with the aeration pipe underneath, we simply pull it out. I just have to have the time and willpower to spend four hours turning the pile!

@@TransformCompost thanks again.... I am a leaf mold soil maker.... If a can get together 20 cubic yards a year I am lucky, so what you are doing is somewhat different, in scale too....although, I do use screened wood chips in that leaf mold mix.... I think it is important for folks using chips to recognize these 2 issues 1, the chips really must be screened down to say the 1cm size, and 2. the wood chips really need to be aged 1 year before sending that stuff into the leaf mold process..... my leaf mold process yields hot compost piles, unlike in nature where the leaves rot slowly on top of the ground, so calling it leaf mold soil is kinda incorrect given it comes out of a hot process....again, thanks for your work in this area. Lots of folks doing this kind of stuff lack the structure and scientific approach you are doing.....

@@TransformCompost to sum things up...aeration accelerates composting, although in bigger piles, you may find some dry pockets from air channeling. This necessitates another pile turn to achieve compost maturity. This second pile turn and moistening (if necessary) will reactivate the microbial process and increase heat again in your pile. This results in a mature compost/soil in as little as 3-4 weeks. WHen I fine screen material (1/2 inch) after my second pile turn this is what I see. This new pile of screened material wants to go hot again to some degree. So, I let any finished screened pile sit for a minimum of 3 weeks prior to adding to the field/garden. Stuff can go out a little hot and young plants hate that..... let that pile rest a bit before getting it in the garden unless you are 100% sure it's mature. ANd from my experience, when adding wood chips, use aged and screened chips. I use chips from white pine and a small amount of hardwood, which I feel should be rested for 2 years, ideally. There's stuff in fresh chips the soil microbes and plants don;t like when it gets concentrated in a piles as fresh, raw, juicing wood chips. WHen you see some fungi inside your wood chip pile, you can then integrate those chips into a soil process. Wood chip piles need to be keep a little moist all the time to accelerate fungal processes.

thanks for sharing! Sounds like you are having fun with and benefiting from the composting process!

why not.....what material are you suggesting?

@@glen.simpson thanks, I am not sure what you mean by what material.

@@karohe sounds like you are going to buffer the sides and bottom of your pile with some sort of material that allows your pile to not get too wet... you called it leachate

I would be careful about the lechate. Lechate is likely contaminated with anaerobic microbes that can infect your plants. How much compost do you want to make?

Thank you for your kind words. Yes, you can compost succesfully outdoors where you are receiving 1000 mm of rain annually. It would be helpful to sort out whether the 1000 mm of rain falls equally over the 12 months or if you have a rainy season. In more rainy periods, its beneficial to maintain enough porosity in the composting material to allow airflow even if the surface moisture content is higher from precipitation.

Hi Jake, thanks for the question. Yes, I would have expected the 3:1 mix to have more air-filled porosity , which would allow more oxygen transfer, but.... the 1:1 mix had an air-filled porosity of 23.3%, and the 3:1 mix had an air-filled porosity of 22.4%! This is in part because the wood chips were wet at almost 70%. What happened is that there is so much more energy in the 1:1 mix, which uses up the oxygen near the surface of the pile. With the 3:1 mix, the oxygen could get further into the pile before it was used up, allowing the temperature to increase and begin the "chimney effect" that we often observe during composting.

It is possible, depending on the moisture content and whether there is any bedding in the manure. If the moisture content is below 70% and there is at least some bedding in the manure, it can be done with aeration and mixing.

That is beyond my expertise, so it would be difficult for me to comment on that.

There are lots of ideas and plans for DIY composting bins available. I really like the insulated bins with a suspended aerated floor because they allow air flow and hold the heat much better. Its a bit more complicated to build that as a DIY project

Yard waste include tree and shrub trimmings including leaves and branches. May also include some lawn clippings. This is shredded and composted. The screened overs is the woody bits that are screened out after the composting process. In this case, they include everything that did not make it through a 1/2" screen. Hope that this helps.

Apparently it can, but may not be allowed commercially in certain areas. See also an article from 2020 that discusses this: www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/15/5959

Thanks for your comment, and I would love to hear about how your composting trials have gone! I will be posting a video on composting dried and ground food waste in the next couple weeks!

Feeding the machine residues to my worms worked well, though only in a thin layer otherwise it warmed up significantly. I’m not sure what the resulting salt content is, I’ll have to send a sample for testing sometime. I guess it depends on what went in to the machine. As for the ASP trial, I mixed the machine residues in with too many other feedstocks to get a good sense of how it composts. I will try it sometime with just one carbon feedstock and see how it goes. I got the impression that the stuff seemed to reduce the porosity of the mix… the pile has stayed above 60C for over two months now, the first month with aeration, second month without. Unfortunately I no longer have an oxygen meter. But I could see that the feedstock material had not broken down much after the first month.

It's not likely very easy to achieve with just chicken manure by itself. If you would wish to speed up the process, it would require actively aerating it, mixing it at least 2 x weekly, and adding water or other liquid material. Chicken manure contains so much energy, and hence requires a lot of air, which dries out the product quickly. Hence the need for adding water and mixing it at least 2 x weekly. Just turning the product with a compost turner works, but it takes a much longer because the oxygen drops to 0 within minutes after turning. I hope that this is helpful.

Thank you.

you are very welcome!

You are very welcome! Its great to hear that this is helpful!

Yes, bokashi is an anaerobic process that stabilizes the food waste by lowering pH. We don't get significant weight reduction, and I am curious whether the methane potential changes.

Thank you for sharing.

There are appliances, sometimes called "kitchen composters" (you can google this), that produced dried and ground food scraps.

Sounds interesting, but remember that hot air rises, so generally we just need to provide air in the bottom, and as long as the mix is porous enough, it should breathe just fine!

Thanks for the kind words, if I come to the USCC, you may not recognize me without my hat!

These are 7.5 hp centrifugal blowers

@@TransformCompost what’s the CFM and pressure of this fan if you don’t mind me asking trying to set up something similar, or the model on those 7.5hp

@@TransformCompostalso how long do yall let your pipes cure

@@ChandlerBrooks not sure of your question - how long do the pipes cure?

@@TransformCompost the piles

Thanks!

Thanks for sharing. Indeed a challenge and concern when including construction and demolition waste in the compost process.