Biological Evaporation by Composting for Alcohol Industries Waste Water

Alcohol production from molasses can lead to large amounts of wastewater that cause serious environmental concern. It is characterized with extremely high organic loading rate, high turbidity and dark brown color .Composting this kind of wastewater is a biothermal aerobic process that during composting heat generated by the composition of the organic material reduces the moisture content of the pile. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of periodically increasing alcohol spent wash (wastewater) to compost pile on decreasing bulking agent and increasing wastewater evaporation using two pilot scale compost piles. Two same mixtures of waste wood chips and saw dust as bulking agent, waste water from alcohol industry and compost fertilizer were thoroughly mixed in small piles in the first one there was no any additional increasing of waste water to pile but in the second one , wastewater was added periodically to pile. the result showed ,Increasing periodical wastewater to the pile can evaporate moisture content about%72 of total weight of the pile in 10 days while in the conventional system, only 28% of total weight of pile evaporated in 14 days. Increscent the rate of evaporation in the second pile comparing to evaporation rate in the first pile shows that the second method needs less bulking material and more evaporation in same volume of media. Physicochemical analysis showed increasing in electro conductivity, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium in the second pile.