Abstract:
The objective of this study was to determine the performance of plastic and
terracotta reactors for food waste composting. This research studied the performance of
terracotta and plastic containers for making compost from food waste under various
conditions. The conditions consisted of two composting reactor types (plastic and terracotta),
three types of aeration (pile-turning, adding bulking agents and natural condition) and
recirculating system with leachate. This research composed of six experiment treatments of
food waste composting conditions in plastic and terracotta containers. The container size was
21 cm. in diameter and 19.5 cm. high with sawdust, 40 mesh, used as bulking agent. Hard
decomposed materials were removed from food waste before composting. Pile-turning was
used for treatments 1 and 2, and leachate recirculating system was added for treatment 1.
Bulking agents were added for treatments 3 and 4, and leachate recirculating system was
added for treatment 3. Treatments 5 and 6 used natural conditions, and leachate recirculating
system was added for treatment 5. This research also aimed to determine the duration of
compost in each treatment to determine minimum time to produce compost to be used as soil
amendment.
The results showed that the composting reactor types were affected by temperature
and moisture content. It also showed that the aeration affected characteristic changes such as
pH level, moisture content, organic carbon, volatile solids, total nitrogen and C/N ratio. The
results indicated that the parameters of pH, moisture content, volatile solid, organic carbon,
total nitrogen and C/N ratio in compost by pile turning and natural conditions were not
significantly different. Adding leachate using a recirculating system had no effect on any
characteristic change in composting including pH, moisture content, temperature, volatile
solids, organic carbon, total nitrogen and C/N ratio.
The results suggested that treatment 3, adding bulking agents, adding leachate and
using terracotta as a composting reactor, showed the best performance among other treatments
in this study since all characteristics met the criteria in the shortest time (10 days).
Furthermore, the compost grade of end products had a higher amount of nutrients than the
standard for good compost recommended by the Thai Department of Land Development