Abstract:
Composting is a process in which organic substances are reduced from
large volumes of rapidly decomposable materials to small volumes of materials that
continue to decompose slowly in controlled conditions to produce a soil conditioner.
Composting is not widely practice due to certain limitations such as the waste is too
high in moisture content and hard to segregate. High humidity climate making the
waste hard to preserved. The present of odour and vector problem, reduce the interest
in trying to apply composting. A compact indoor composter was build to performed
composting for households waste generated from the kitchen that is able to eliminate
vector and odour issues. Waste collection was performed schedually for 8 weeks to
obtain the data on waste generation percapita for composter size estimations. A
fourteen days two trail composting was performed to determine the efficiency of the
composter using unmodified waste. The composting was unable to pass through
thermophilic regions for pathogenic removal with the average temperature of 35°C.
The sample was determined are very high in moisture which pose problems to the
composting where the excess moisture leach out from compost carry along macro
nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium out from the compost up to 50 percent
from the initial concentrations. Fortunately, the compost was able to reduce the mass
of the waste efficiently with the range of 70 to 85 percent by mass. Compost products
generated from the composter are rich in potassium, which is suitable usage for plants
with seeds and flowers.
