• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.280-286
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• 1999

This studies were conducted to evaluate efficiency of microbial inoculator for active composting of food wastes. The Microbial inoculators used in this studies were purchased from different comparise to evaluate their effectiveness for composting of food waste in Korea. The number of bacteria growing at $30^{\circ}C$ in commercial inoculator collected were below $91.0{\times}10^8\;CFU/g$ which were counted from well cured compost made by animal manure. The number of bacteria in commercial microbial inoculator, such as FL, VP, B9, CM and GE were higher than that of composted at $50^{\circ}C$ or $60^{\circ}C$ of incubation temperature. Fungi were counted in GR, VP and B9 as over $10^3CFU/g$ at $30^{\circ}C$ of incubation temperature, while fungi of all the commercial inoculator collected could not grown at $50^{\circ}C$ and $60^{\circ}C$. Actinomycetes in most of the these had higher number($10^5CFU/g$) than that of compost : however, it was not detected at $60^{\circ}C$ incubation temperature from all the samples collected. The amount of carbon dioxid production was order to VP>HU>B9>GE>CM>Control>Compost in the lab scale composting test with or without inoculation of commercial inoculators, however, but the difference in carbon dioxide production was similar among each treatments. The effect of inoculation on composting parmeter such as pH changes, temperature increasing and change of chemicals properties were a little among each treatments, with or without inoculation of commercial inoculator in active composting of food waste. Using commercial inoculator did not show any statistical difference in food waste composting process under various condition such as pH changes, temperature changes, etc.