Compost???

Question

I am doing a science project on compost and I thought it would be cool to do something on how you could use compost to heat a room. I know that the bacteria generates heat as it decomposes the matter and I think that I could create a project on using compost to heat small room. I would really like to hear any ideas or suggestions to build on this idea. Thanks so much!!

Answer 1

Wow. I have no idea how you could use compost to heat a room. I Do know however, that many waste management companies use methane (which is created when garbage- such as compost, decomposes) for the creation of electricty. I visited a landfill once and saw many long poles sticking out of the ground. They were collecting methane from the decomposing garbage.

I very much doubt you could use compost to heat a room. If this is even possible the compost bin would probably have to be Huge. Also, i think the heat is transferred mostly to the actual compost, not to the air (i could be totolly wrong on this though). That is why compost is hot when you touch it.

People in developing countries (such as many african countries) do use biomass for heat. Biomass is just a fancy name for animal crap (or 'scat' as it is known scientifically). They burn it and heat rooms or cook food. Maybe you have some scat laying around?

Answer 2

Here's a good link:
http://www.css.cornell.edu/compost/physics.html
It might be too good, because it almost answers your question.
The approach I'd take is to find out how much heat it takes to warm up a room to 70 degrees, assuming that it's 40 degrees outside and the room would cool by a certain number of degrees each hour if it wasn't heated. Then, figure out how big of a compost pile you would need to heat that room to make up for the heat that it is losing.

Answer 3

This makes the project more difficult, but add copper pipes to the digestor then add water or blow air through the pipe to heat a very small space otherwise you risk slowing the digestor process.