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Aerobic Digesters

 
gardener
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So, anaerobic digesters make fuel, a kind of compost, and stink.
What about Aerobic Digesters?

Aerobic digesters are used in large scale municipal water treatment plants, some septic systems, and even in school cafeterias.
I've even seen a few homestead built systems built to deal with human feces.
Most of these devices seem to use agitators to add air and stir the waste.

The appliances that are installed in commercial kitchens use specially bred bacteria and plastic medium for them to live in.
They are able to reduce up to 5,000kg of waste to gray water in only 24 hours.
This includes meat and bones.
Greywater, not Blackwater.
Ready send down the drain, or in our case into the landscape.
These things seem a lot like the biofilters that are used in aquaculture.

https://www.aerobictechnologies.net/faqs/



So how can this come into play on a small scale?
Most of of us are familiar with making aerated compost teas, and we are familiar with anaerobic weed tea.
The compost in aerated tea is usually already decayed to the point that sugar is added to feed the  aerobic organisms.
Making weed tea is a composting process, that starts with fresh material.

Ground up foodwaste in water with some living compost and a bubbler.
Maybe add  charcoal for the critters to occupy.
That's pretty much it.

Is it worth doing?
I have a barrel full of stinky anaerobic muck.
I think adding a bubbler will be a good expirement.
 
pollinator
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I have worked with ' Bio disc sewerage treatment " plants which were aerobic.
They have discs slowly rotating in the settlement tank half submerged, and work very well in cold areas.
I will follow this up out of interest.
 
John C Daley
pollinator
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The bio-disc process involves allowing the wastewater to come in contact with bacteria which grow on the biodiscs and digest the pollutants
in the wastewater before discharge of the treated wastewater to the environment, usually a ditch or stream.
The discs rotate at about 5 mins a lap and any discharge is chlorinated first.
images-12.jpg
Bio disc process
Bio disc process
 
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EVERY dairy farm in my area uses this method for their dairy cow manure.

They use huge lagoons where the manure is pushed into, then as the solids settle out, the water rises to the top sealing in the all important nitrogen while it is in storage. Just before they spread it on their fields during certain times of the year, they attach huge pumps to tractors and mix the water and nitrogen-dense manure. Then they spread it on their fields by spraying it out the back of huge tanker trucks. Since certain types of grasses are not killed by the whole process, in particular clover, the following year a person can see the ribbon of clover across the field where the truck made is manure application pass.

It really is a great system for manure application on dairy farms.
 
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