Composting of organic waste with the use of mineral additives

<p>Aerobic composting is one of the best available technologies for an integrated waste management system in terms of minimizing the anthropogenic impact on the environment, complying with the latest domestic and foreign developments, economic and practical acceptance of the technology. Organic production is rapidly spreading in the world as a holistic system of rational nature management that becomes the basis for the use of modern composting technologies for organic raw materials to obtain a quality product of processing. But composting is characterized by relatively low popularity in comparison with other methods of waste utilization due to a number of its disadvantages, such as a long production cycle and sometimes the unstable quality of a product obtained. Because of this, many studies in the field of solid waste recycling are devoted to methods of accelerating the composting process. This can be achieved in various ways, such as the development of high–performance composting machines and biotic changes (vermiculture, use of specialized crops and biocenoses of microorganisms), or abiotic (temperature, pH, etc.) parameters of the process.</p><p class="1">The article presents the results of studying the effect of mineral additives on organic waste composting processes, with the aim of its accelerating in mesophilic and thermophilic temperature regimes with controlled parameters. To improve the efficiency of the composting process and compare the features of the processes, the soil was used as a microbiological inoculum, and mineral salts solutions as a mineral additive. The results of the studies allow us to conclude that it is advisable to compost plant waste with a mineral additive, both in the thermophilic and the mesophilic mode. The compost ripening period, with a mineral additive used, is 6 weeks. It is shown that the mineral complex accelerates the composting of the organic constituent of municipal solid waste by 2.2 times in the thermophilic mode, and by 1.4 times under the mesophilic conditions of the composting process, which proves the effectiveness of its use in recycling municipal solid waste to increase the general level of environmental safety.</p>