Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Report blames faulty bio-scrubber for Orgaworld odours in London

Report blames faulty bio-scrubber for Orgaworld odours in London: "The infamously odoriferous Orgaworld composting plant in London, Ont., owed a lot of its problems to a pool of stagnant water inside its bioscrubber — the very part of the plant that was supposed to be responsible for removing foul smells — a consultant’s report has found.

Why the London plant was so smelly matters in Ottawa because the company wants permission for its facility on Hawthorne Road to take diapers and waste in plastic bags. The City of Ottawa decided to forbid those materials in its green-bin program specifically out of concern that they’d make Ottawa’s compost too foul. The London plant, which takes diapers and bags, shut down in July due to odour problems, but re-opened this month after a major overhaul.

The “Root Cause Analysis” of the London stench, prepared by the environmental consulting company MWH, found that there was “little or no biological removal of odour” occurring inside the bioscrubber.

Inside the scrubber, there were high concentrations of ammonia and two “highly odorous compounds associated with the decomposition of organic matter” — hydrogen sulfide and dimethyl disulfide — were being created, the report found."

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