Study on Suitable Moisture for Pellet Compost Making and Machanical Mixing Technique

Pellet compost contributes to sustainable agriculture systems in Cambodia. It also inspires Cambodian farmers to use organic fertilizers instead of chemical fertilizers in agricultural practices. According to the sustainable agriculture program for environment conservation of the Institute of Environment Rehabilitation and Conservation (ERECON), one topic for study concerns machine and mixing techniques with suitable moisture for making pellet compost. The purposes of the experiment are to study about the process of making pellet compost with two kinds of machines (diskpelleters and mincing machines), and to identify appropriate moisture for practical use of each machine. There are some parameters for studying the process of making pellet compost of those machines, such as potential of each machine, percentage of good pellet compost, length of the granule, and characteristics of the granule. In identifying moisture, five treatments and three replications were selected, each of which was added with different amounts of water: T1= 750 ml, T2= 900 ml, T3= 1050 ml, T4= 1200 ml, and T5= 1350 ml into 5.505 kg of compost mixture compound with 23.36% of water content, which consists of conventional compost, termite-mound soil and palm sugar with a ratio of 5:0.5:0.005. As a result, for the diskpelleter machine experiment, we got the best result for treatment T2 which was added with 900 ml of water and had 45.42% of water content. The producing capacity of this machine was 139.75 kg/h in dry mass. For mincing machine, treatment T3, added with 1050 ml of water and having 48.69% of water content, got the best result, with a producing capacity of 64.39 kg/h in dry mass. Therefore, 45.42% of water content in compost mixture was the best moisture for making pellet compost with the diskpelleter machine and 48.69% of water content in compost mixture was the best moisture for making pellet compost with the mincing machine.