Aerated Compost Tea Brewer

This page is a work in progress.

Design Rationale

The purpose of an Aerated Compost Tea Brewer is to take raw, organically-based feedstocks and use them as feedstocks of bacteria and fungi that are beneficial and even protective to plants in order to increase their productivity, ensure they do not harbor bacteria that are harmful to them or to people ingesting them. Additionally, it shortens the amount of time to convert waste into plant-ready fertilizer. This will need to be a series of designs meant to scale functionality, but not design. For example, it is not practical to use 50+ 5 gallon buckets when an Intermediate Bulk Container can be used.

Function

A compost tea brewer immerses biological matter in water that is highly aerated. The purpose of aerating it is to ensure that "good" bacteria and fungi, which for the most part thrive in aerobic environments ("bad" bacteria thrive in aenerobic environments generally) out-compete bad bacteria and fungi. These good bacteria help plants fix nitrogen, absorb nutrients, and release antibiotics that kill bad bacteria and fungi. There are many recipes for compost tea, but most have the following inputs:

Inputs

Molasses- provides a source of sugars to help cultivate the microbes that decompose the biological wastes into plant-available forms. Mycorrhizae- Helps plants absorb nutrients, provides a physical barrier to prevent root rot, releases antibiotics that kill bad bacteria. Azotobacter- These bacteria fix nitrogen to make it available to plants. Fibrous and Vegetative biomass- this gives a balance of starches for the culture and sources of nitrogen to be made bioavailable. Generally, 50-70% fiber, 50-30% vegetative. Rock dust- provides trace nutrients Fish and animal feces Grey water Worm castings- worm castings are a good starter of the culture, plus are loaded with nutrients.

Outputs

Compost tea- It's a growth media, foliar spray, and an innoculant. Studies have shown that a foliar spraying with compost tea at the right time can massively increase yields significantly (citation soon)

Materials

• CEB Water Cistern
• Stainless Steel Mesh Box
• Oiless compressor- used for various other applications in the holistic aquaponics greenhouse toolkit
• Pressure regulators
• Airstones
• 5 micron filter
• Azomite[1]
• Biofertilizer [2] starter culture
• Various ABS plumbing fixtures