Turning waste into profit: Improving the quality of European compost

The Smart Systems group at IRIS, teamed with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and the Technical University of Lisbon, is helping to improve the quality of European compost

“COMPO-BALL”, a 3-year research and development project funded by the European Commission, develops a novel on-line wireless system for the measurement of temperature and humidity in composting material. Bringing together 16 partners from 9 European countries, the project promises to bring affordable composting monitoring technology to the European composting industry- in the shape of simple yellow balls that can be placed in the compost and which will send signals over a wireless network to a central server. In a recent statement by the European Composting Network, Mr. Josef Barth said he was “impressed by the progress that has been made by the research partners” in the first year of the project.  Dr. Jan Wedekind, project coordinator of COMPO-BALL at IRIS added that “There is still a lot of work to be done but we are on a very good track”. The first ‘alpha’ version of the COMPO-BALLs are scheduled to be ready by April 2011. The objective for this version will be the extensive testing of the integrated system as well as on learning how to the handle the balls during the composting cycle in a plant.  For more information about the COMPO-BALL project contact Dr. Jan Wedekind: jwedekind@iris.cat

IRIS to present latest developments at International Congress on Engineering and Food