New System Hastens Compost Production

Compost happens.

But not easily or quickly, which can be a problem for farmers who might run afoul of the Environmental Protection Agency’s strict rules regarding animal waste disposal.

Environmental Products & Technologies Corp. in Westlake Village hopes to ease this waste management problem with a new closed-loop system that is being tested at two dairy farms.

Company spokesman David Foster said the four-part system is designed to address the concerns of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the EPA over nutrients, pathogens, nitrogen, phosphorus, ammonia, odors and other potential environmental hazards that come from animal feeding operations such as dairies and pig farms.

“The trend in farming now is to have more animals in a smaller space” Foster said. “This can overload a [waste management] system, [causing] waste and toxins to get into the waterways.”

Animal waste is often dumped in specially made lagoons that use microbes to treat the material. This cuts the odors, he said, but not necessarily the pollutants. Plus, because lagoons are open, they can easily overflow during rainstorms, spreading the waste and contaminating fresh water and land.

Sometimes animal waste, such as cow manure, is piled up in mounds, he said. In California especially, this can be a problem because when the manure dries, gusty Santa Ana winds blow it around, sprinkling manure dust over fields and waterways.

Foster said his company’s modular system has four parts: a waste separator, an aerobic bio-reactor, an anaerobic digester and a cogeneration system.

The waste separator separates liquid from solid and works with either food or animal waste. The solids then go into the bio-reactor, which utilizes bacteria that live in an oxygen atmosphere. The anaerobic digester employs microbes that function without oxygen. The microbes break down organic matter and destroy pathogens.

The process can turn manure into compost in 48 hours, Foster said--compared to 60 to 120 days for traditional composting methods. He said the process is greatly speeded up by the nature of the closed, self-contained system, which maintains steady temperatures that boost decay rates.

The liquid waste is also processed, flushed through a series of tanks, one of which draws off methane gas, which is then piped to an engine and burned to generate electrical power. This methane can be used to power other machines and equipment while the water is filtered for recycling.

The Environmental Products system is being tested at Utah State University and is being installed at a Chino dairy farm. If the tests pan out, said Conly Hansen, a professor of biological engineering at Utah State, the company could indeed make a breakthrough in waste management.

“The jury is still out, but I’d say this looks promising,” said Hansen, who has been studying anaerobic digestion for 21 years.

Compost is a soil conditioner and fertilizer made from decomposed animal and plant matter. It is usually made by layering soil, manure and plant material, such as grass clippings, leaves, fruit peel, etc. Microorganisms in the manure and soil digest the garbage and transform it into humus, the organic part of soil.

“The composting process is as old as nature,” said Foster. ‘We just optimized it, sped it up. The 48-hour turnaround is a big advantage because it allows us to keep up with the waste stream.”

Hansen also noted that in a conventional composting system, there might be cold spots where a pathogen can live. But in this new enclosed system, the temperature is uniform, making it more effective at killing germs.

Composting generally requires several steps to treat waste, but with this system, “You just put the waste product in one end and it comes out the other,” Hansen explained.

A typical unit may measure about 8 by 24 feet, but sizes can vary. The bio-reactor can be installed on the farm itself, even in a barn, Foster said. “This puts us as close to the source as possible,” Foster said.

Although Foster would not discuss cost of the system, he said it would be competitive with the current lagoon system, which can run hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Although the Environmental Products system would have economic benefits in terms of providing fertilizer and possibly power, Foster says the biggest boon is that it would help animal feeding operations meet EPA and USDA regulations, keeping them from going out of business.

“Dairies are being threatened with being shut down because of polluting, because of the large concentration of animals,” Foster said. Pig farms, for example, have been a problem because they generate large amounts of methane and ammonia, causing air pollution as well as waste problems.

Because the company’s system is closed, the waste material will not contaminate fresh water or add to air pollution, Foster said.

The 4-year-old company originally developed a system to neutralize noxious odors, he said. “But that system wasn’t very marketable, which caused us to realize that [odor] wasn’t the problem. The problem was with what was causing the odor. This [system] takes care of the odor and a lot more.”