Introduction of Compost
In short, compost is decomposed organic matter. It is a sort of organic fertilizer. Composting is a natural process of recycling organic materials such as leaves, livestock manure, household waste, sludge, crop straws and other solid organic substance into a rich soil amendment. It also adds the soil and mineral substance for mixing and stacking. Under the condition of high temperature and high humidity, via fermentation, decomposition, and microbiological degradation, thus the compost can be produced successfully.
As an ancient fertilizer, compost has an important position in agriculture. We can have a better understanding of compost in the next section.
The Benefits of Compost
For quite a long time application of compost, research has shown that using compost as mulch, in the soil or as potting media is beneficial in many ways.
1. Improve Soil Structure
Compost is mainly used for improving soil. Fine quality refuse composting is applied in agricultural production. It not only increases the soil humus and nutrients, but also enhances the quality of soil.
In composting, combination of organic matter and soil can loosen clayey soil while it aggregates the sandy soil. Compost helps bind clusters of soil particles, providing soil that full of tiny air channels and pores that hold air, moisture and nutrients. Thus, it obviously improves soil structure which can enhance the soil function of ventilation, water-retention and soil fertilization.
2. Promote the Growth of Plant Roots
Composting is the regrowth process of beneficial microorganism. It produces large quantities useful metabolites which is beneficial to the growth of plant roots. Compost helps the roots penetrate the soil, thus it can enhance the ability of drought resisting.
3. Increase Crop Yields
A study has shown that appropriately application of high quality compost has a good production effect. Better stimulation effect will gain especially when it used in the vegetable field which is with low soil fertility. It can also improve vegetables quality and reduce the ratio of rotten vegetables. Compost increases the calcium, potassium content in vegetables while decreasing the nitrate and nitrite content. It has more visible yield-increasing effects on crops such as rice, potato, carrot and etc.
4. Reuse the Wastes
Composting can significantly cut down on your overall household wastes. By reusing the wastes, we could minimize the loss of valuable organic materials and return them to the soil as well as lessen the burden of the landfill.
5. Reduce the Plant Diseases and Insect Pests
After treatment of high-temperature composting, pathogenic bacteria were reduced and the harmful ova was killed. Compost supplies beneficial organisms such as nitrogen fixing bacteria, provides an abundant organic matter to the soil. Microorganisms can facilitate organic matter decomposition which, in turn, leads to humus formation and nutrient availability. Plant disease and insect pests incidence on many plants can be reduced.
Besides, as a mulch, finished compost can suppress weeds.
Introduction of Compost Windrow Turner
The composting process improves when the raw materials are initially well blended. It improves further if the materials are occasionally mixed and
agitated as they decompose. For these blending and agitation functions, compost relies heavily on the fertilizer equipment–compost turner. Compost turner is also called compost windrow turner. It is the core equipment of the dynamic aerobic composting and is mainly applied to the fermentation system of organic fertilizer. As a new type machine, compost turner is unknown in the nation’s product catalog. But it is gradually popular among the equipment of bio-organic fertilizer. It replaces the manual work or fork-lift truck to turn the materials and becomes the mainstream product which influences the development trend of composting industrial.
In a word, compost windrow turner is a reliable fertilizer machine in aerobic fermentation and organic fertilizer production.
Function of Compost Windrow Turner in Compost Production
● Mixing Function
In the process of making compost, it has to add some auxiliary materials
in order to adjust the raw material’s carbon nitrogen ratio, ph, water content and etc. The main raw materials and all kinds of accessories are piled up together which can rely on the compost windrow turner for mixing work. To make them mixing evenly until to achieve the applicable standard.
● Adjust the Temperature of Raw Material Pile
In operation of compost turner, the raw material aggregates are fully contacted and mixed with air. Material pile conserves mass fresh air, which is contributed to producing heat during fermentation of active aerobic micro-organism. Then the temperature of material pile is increasing. As temperatures rise, the supplement of clean air can reduce the temperature. Thus, the temperature can change alternately which forms the medium temperature-low temperature-medium temperature-high temperature recycle. A variety of beneficial microbial floras are growing and breeding in its’ adaptive temperature period.
● Improve the Permeability of Stock Pile
The turning system can process the raw materials into small mass. Thus the thick and dense raw material pile will become fluffy, high resilience and form the appropriate porosity. Will the sticky materials become the granular structure which can conserve mass fresh air? This is the important criterion for measuring the performance of compost windrow turner.
● Adjust the Moisture of Stock Pile The appropriate moisture content of raw materials fermentation is hovering at about 50%. The moisture standard of finished organic fertilizer is under 20%. In the fermentation process, the biochemical reaction will produce the new moisture. Microorganism consumes the raw materials which will result in the water lost the carrier and then freed out. Therefore, through the composting process will reduce the moisture in time. In addition to relying on the thermal conduction to form the vaporization, the compost windrow turner can also emerge the mandatory water vapor which is evaporated by turning the raw materials over and over.
● Achieve the special needs of composting process
The compost windrow turner can achieve the special requirements of composting process. As for crushing the raw materials, it gives the stock pile a definite shape or it can make the quantitative displacement of raw materials come true. As one of the important equipment of fermentation and organic fertilizer production line, compost windrow turner is always walking in the forefront of the development of the times. It makes greatly contributes to the organic fertilizer production.
