Substitute for peat

PROMECO has recently developed an innovative system for the production of artificial peat from materials that are mostly composed by natural fibres (biomass, agricultural waste, wood chips, green waste, lignocellulosic fraction from composting facilities).

Recently, the demand for a product replacement of peat has increased, also for the pressure by the European Union.
Peatlands are in fact places of natural interest.
Moreover, the traditional cycle of extraction / transport / use of peat involves significant levels of greenhouse gas emissions. LCA are readily available in the literature.
Consequently, the European Union is taking steps to limit the use of peat as a component for both substrates as well as biomass for energy use.
The European Union denies EcoLabel to products for substrates containing peat, but a full ban on the use of peat as a substrate or as an alternative fuel is already in agenda.
The British government has already planned the full ban of peat by 2020.

The search for artificial substitutes of peat from other materials has already achieved significant results from fibers of wood, lignocellulosic materials and wood species.
However, the process developed by PROMECO can accept as input materials considered as waste, with low economic value, with a substantial advantage in terms costs reduction.

The process for obtaining artificial peat is divided into two phases:

1. Pre-treatment eliminates impurities and contamination from incoming material, adopting technologies commonly used in the treatment of waste
2. Defibration: implemented by a machine specifically designed to be carry out this operation, It is an extruder with two short counter-rotating screws, equipped with a front plate specifically engineered to increase the pressure on the material and to improve its defibration. The processed  material is enerved and defibrated to a point at which it radically changes its physical structure. This thermo-mechanical decomposition of the processed materials allow to:
1. optimize structure, texture and size of the matrices
2. get a material that offers a larger surface to the action of aerobic bacteria,
3. increase the porosity at the microscopic level, and thus the possibility of oxygenation
4. transform, due to the generated heat, the plastic matrix in particles that can be assimilated to an extruded product.
5. eliminate non-reusable fractions of materials, as all the material is extruded and then composted.
6. Get a significant reduction of the time for the maturation of the compost, and thus the area required.

These factors easy the composting process by:

• a significant reduction of time needed for composting
• a greater possibility of controlling and regulating the process
• the absence of leachate and odors.

The process allows to obtain a replacement product with all the characteristics equivalent to those of the natural peat (neutral pH, reduced salinity, high porosity, specific gravity between 150 and 250 kg / m³), ​​to be used as growing media (soil, soil improver) in floriculture, horticulture, gardening, landscaping.

• Companies producing or selling horticultural substrates for the professional greenhouse, public and private green, urban landscape, leisure industry, mushrooms and berries cultivation
• companies active in the extraction of peat
• companies having the availability  of  the materials used as inputs to the production process
• companies  managing composting plants, as the line of treatment can be inserted into an existing composting plant to improve the process, reducing time and costs, improving the quality of the finished product

• The first industrial-scale plant is in production in the UK since July 2009
• The resulting product has been certified for use in green areas to be implemented in conjunction with the London Olympic Games of 2012