The large amounts of the agricultural wastes remaining after the
harvesting operations of the different crops represent a great challenge facing
farmers, where they are estimated at 25 million tons annually. The farmers
have to burn these wastes. This behavior leads to serious problems including
the air pollution. Composting is considered the other choice to get rid of the
agricultural wastes. It aims at both conservation of the environment, human
safety and economically convenient production. The current investigation
aims at:
1- Designing a network for forcing air through the compost pile to
facilitate production of a good compost.
2- Studying the effect of both type of tube and rate of forcing air through it
on the end-product, i.e. the compost beside of saving labor and time of
production.
A direct ventilation system has been designed. It works on the
basis that there is no turning but through forced air for the purpose of
producing the compost from a mixture of rice straw and cattle dung at
ratio of 2:1.
For fulfilling these purposes four networks were designed as follows:
1- Transversal system.
2- Longitudinal system.
3- Width and length system.
4- Reciprocal system.
The whole system was designed using PVC pipes with a 6.35 cm diameter,
3.9 mm thickness, a 262 cm length and a 130 cm width. The length and width
were drilled with holes at equally divided distances of 30 cm (center to center)
in two parallel rows.
The used types of tubes and the rate of air forced through them were
evaluated according to the compost quality standards and guidelines which
depend on determining quality parameters of the compost to be used in
agriculture. |
