Member Article

Robots monitor compost in County Durham

A North East waste management company is employing a high-tech solution to measure its compost production – robotic probes.

Premier Waste Management processes garden waste from businesses and local authorities across the North East, turning the garden clippings and grass cuttings in to a compost that can be resold to businesses across the region.

The high grade compost takes a total of six weeks to create, and requires accurate temperature monitoring to ensure the natural process of composting is taking place at the required speed to reach the quality standards.

To increase the accuracy of the measuring Premier Waste Management has introduced DiO Store-Temp robotic temperature probes, to measure and assess the natural biological activity of microbes as they break down the plant material in to compost.

Darren Smith, General Manager at Premier Waste said: “The use of the DiO Store-Temp robotic temperature monitoring system has brought us a new understanding of the composting process.

“The system does not sleep and records data continuously this means we are getting a much better picture of what is happening inside the compost pile and we can see how environmental factors are affecting the compost.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .