El-Sayed G Khater, Adel H Bahnasawy and Samir A Ali
A mathematical model of heat balance was developed to predict the compost temperature during the maturation stage. The components of the energy balance of the compost pile which include: heat gained (heat generation and solar radiation) and heat lost (radiation, evaporation, convection, and conduction) at different ambient temperatures. The model was able to predict the pile temperature at different ambient temperatures (15, 20, 25, 30 and 35°C) and different airflow rates (0.7, 1.1 and 1.5 mg air s-1 kg-1 dry matter). The results showed that the pile temperature increases with increasing ambient temperature and it decreases with increasing airflow rates, where, as the ambient temperature increased from 15 to 35°C, the pile temperature increased from 33.40 to 37.41°C, and when the airflow rates increased from 0.7 to 1.5 mg air s-1 kg-1 dry matter, the pile temperature decreased from 34.40 to 32.39°C. The pile temperature increased slightly and reached a maximum value at day 14. It indicates that the net energy gained to the pile increases with increasing ambient temperature, meanwhile, the heat lost decreases with increasing ambient temperature. The model results indicated that the predicted daily temperature was in a reasonable agreement with those measured ones and other data in literature (Barrena et al. and Ahn et al.) at different ambient temperatures and airflow rates, where, it ranged from 30.30 to 73.40°C, while it was from 18.0 to 71.0°C experimentally during the whole period of compost maturation.
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