doiSerbia

Heat recovery in compost piles for building applications

Walther Edouard (ENS Cachan, University Paris-Saclay, France)
Ferrier Renaud (ENS Cachan, University Paris-Saclay, France)
Bennacer Rachid (ENS Cachan, University Paris-Saclay, France + Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin Key Lab of Refrigeration, Tianjin, China)
De Sa Caroline (ENS Cachan, University Paris-Saclay, France)
Thierry Eloise (LBPA, ENS Cachan, Univ. Paris-Saclay, France)

This work proposes an estimation of the possible heat recovery of self-heating compost piles for building applications. The energy released during the aerobic composting of lignin and cellulose-based materials is computed by solving an inverse problem. The method consists first in an experimental phase with measurement of the temperature within the heap, then a numerical procedure allows for the inverse identification of the heat production due to the chemical reaction of composting. The simulation results show a good accordance with the experiments for the chosen source-term model. Comparing the results to the theoretical values for the energy released by aerobic composting provides an estimate for the efficiency of the reaction. The reached temperatures and recovered energy fit with the order of magnitude of building needs.

Keywords: heat recovery, aerobic composting, inverse identification, lignin