Research
Funded Research
Organic Waste Utilization Project funding continues
The Organic Waste Utilization project managed by David C. Johnson from the Institute for Energy and the Environment has received a renewal of funding in the amount of $69,450 for the ’08-’09 calendar year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service is funding the project.
Research efforts will continue to search for long-term solutions for remediation of problem wastes from the dairy, agriculture, industrial and municipal industries. Wastes from these sectors have been implicated for their contribution toward ground water, air, and soil pollution through highly mobile inorganic compounds (nitrates, phosphates, sodium, etc.) pervasive biological pathogens that have entered both the human and plant food chain (E. coli, Salmonella) and recalcitrant organic compounds present in the environment (pesticides, herbicides, and chemical breakdown products).
New methods are being explored to decrease or eliminate the environmental impacts of the wastes produced from these industries by focusing on the bioremediation of these wastes through:
- Reuse of these wastes as composting substrates through adjustment of composting methodologies and modification of substrate composition formulas,
- inorganic nutrient sequestration through ion-exchange mechanisms and biosequestration, and
- pathogen reduction through adverse environment and bio-competitive elimination.
The previous year’s results are producing viable cost-effective solutions for remediating these wastes, while offering a marketable byproduct that has multiple attributes for the advancement of sustainable agriculture. The byproduct is an organic-based nutrient dense amendment that has implication for reducing: agro-chemical inputs, crop water consumption, plant pathogen and pest pressure in local crops. Continued research will focus on further improvement in composting methodologies with emphasis on further improvement in product quality, present and future by-product applications, and the potential for expansion into new markets.