Abstract

Waste pollution has caught much attention these recent years. One of the main ill-effects caused is the emission of Greenhouse gases (GHG), which is related to temperature rise of the earth atmosphere and oceans. Waste management policies to combat this calamity have been devised but it has been found that an improper waste management can be harmful, leading to the continuous emission of GHGs. One such example is the direction of large amount of organic wastes to landfills whereby they undergo anaerobic decomposition, releasing in return greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide. An alternative way of treating organic waste is composting. The latter offers numerous advantages such as sequestration of the carbon, preventing it to escape as methane and the production of a soil-enriching substance which is the compost. The composting process consists of several process components that mutually interact with each other, changing their parametric values through the course of the biodegradation mechanism. A close monitoring of these components will ensure an overall green composting process. However, the internal reactions are so complex and involve much uncertainty that they make the composting process difficult to comprehend. In this paper, a modelling approach to the composting process is developed in order to provide a clear insight of the interactions occurring between the different process components. The application can in turn be used by compost producers to understand and monitor the overall process. To address the uncertainty issues, fuzzy logic is used to model the system.