Bonaire – turning horticultural waste & wastewater sludge into compost

Experimental setup compost research Bonaire (Photo by Paul Martin Mählitz)

Development of a composting process using horticultural waste together with wastewater treatment sludge as input materials. After process efficiency research at pilot scale the results suggested that two waste streams in combination with adequate process management could produce a usable product from two waste materials. However, the heavy metal content of the sludge was a concern. Frequent metal content monitoring was a must to assure concentrations remained below maximum allowable concentrations.