Aiming at the problems of rapid deterioration of the components, low screening efficiency and high energy consumption of the existing drum screening equipment in the composting industry, a trommel screening machine for composting was designed, a transmission mode was designed, and a screen cleaning device was added. The fraction model of the trommel screening machine was constructed, the structural parameters of the key components were determined. In order to explore the performance of trommel screening machine, some relevant tests were carried out. Firstly, the three factors experiment was employed with feeding capacity, rotation speed and angle of trommel as the impact factor. Then based on the above screening effect, the experiment of three factors and five levels was executed, so as to study the influence law of screening efficiency and average power on screening performance and achieve the optimal combination of each factors. The results indicated that the trommel screening machine had the optimal screening efficiency and the power consumption, which were 96% and 2.55kW, respectively, when the feeding rate was set at 39.6t/h, the trommel speed was set at 12.4r/min and the trommel angle was set at 5.6°. Through the verification test, the screening efficiency was 95% and the power consumption was 2.69kW under the influence of the same factors. The relative errors were 1.1% and 5.5% with the theoretical results, which could satisfy the requirements of material screening quality.