A new control strategy for the composting process based on the oxygen uptake rate.pdfVIP

Chemical Engineering Journal 165 2010 161–169 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Chemical Engineering Journal j o u rn al h ome A new control strategy for the composting process based on the oxygen uptake rate Belén Puyuelo, Teresa Gea ? , Antoni Sánchez Composting Research Group, Department of Chemical Engineering, Escola d’Enginyeria, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08913 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Up to now different control strategies to supply the oxygen requirements to the composting process Received 16 July 2010 have been studied. All of them seek for the biological activity optimization. In general, temperature and Received in revised form 6 September 2010 oxygen content are identi?ed as the key parameters to assess the microbial activity. For this reason, the Accepted 6 September 2010 most favorable range of temperature and oxygen content for composting has frequently been studied and used as controllers’ set points. On contrast, no previous works have studied the feasibility of oxygen Keywords: supply according to the biological activity during the process, measured as oxygen uptake rate. In this Oxygen uptake rate ?eld, a new automatic composting controller has been developed using the oxygen uptake rate measure Optimization Composting as the measured variable. After setting up and to start-up this new technique, two pilot composting Process control trials were undertaken with municipal solid waste. Oxygen, temperature and cyclic controllers were Air?ow also implemented and tested in the composting of the same waste, in order to compare the results and Residence time distribution to determine what the optimum system is. The four systems studied had similar temperature pro?les, whereas except for the new controller, the oxygen content was constantly oscillating during most part of the process due to severe air?ow changes. Throug