Claudio Bellaver1
In developing agricultural countries, chemical fertilizer is highly necessary to replenish the nutrients removed by the increasing grain crops, pasture, vegetables and forest commodities. The expansion of planting areas and new technologies encourage increased demand for fertilizers and enable greater productivity and profitability of crops. At the same time, most strategic scenarios do not consider the production of an organic fertilizer or organic mineral, which have great interaction with chemical fertilizers. This is partly because existing technologies for the production of organics are inefficient and imply excessive time for its production. Even so, it is expected that there will be a significant increase in demand for organic fertilizers for the next decade. This represents a great opportunity for those who have the organic raw material, mainly waste. But, what kind of wastes?
A quick listing shows that these materials are organics from various supply chains, among which: all agricultural straws and husks; yard trimming; wood shavings and sawdust; discarded paper/cardboard, cellulose mud, cleaning of grain/feed silos; fruit waste; spoiled cakes; poultry litter, pig, dairy and cattle feedlot manures; hatchery wastes; industrial restaurant and market waste; DAF slaughterhouse mud; sludge floaters; wastes of food industry (meat, beer, wine and several brews); urban and rural animal mortalities, solids from bio digester and wastewater treatment; wood ash from boilers; earth used in bleaching of fats and the organic fraction of municipal solid waste.
Therefore, there is a need to treat these tremendous volumes of organic waste with proper Technological Innovation. One efficient tool to accomplish this is the Accelerated Composting (AC) in a rotary bioreactor. This technology complies with the fundamentals of composting and regulations, which define composting as a process of biological decomposition of biodegradable organic fraction of the waste, carried out by a diverse population of organisms under controlled aerobic conditions and other parameters (ratio of carbon: nitrogen, moisture, temperature, pH, particle size, porosity, homogeneity of the mixture).
1 DVM, PhD, ProEmbrapa and Qualyfoco Consulting Ltd. bellaver@qualyfoco.com.br
