Influence of clay as additive on greenhouse gases emission and maturity evaluation during chicken manure composting
Introduction
In China, due to the rapid development of chicken farms, the output of chicken manure (CM) has risen sharply in the past decade. The over production and accumulation of untreated CM has caused a series of environmental and social problems (Shi et al., 2018). While, as an available organic waste, the CM has a high concentration of macro and micro nutrients among all livestock manure. Therefore, the cost effective waste-recycling technologies need to find to convert CM into fertilizer. In this regard, aerobic composting is considered as an effective way to manage livestock manure because mature compost application can improve soil fertility and promote plant growth (Hageman et al., 2018).
However, unsuitable composting could result in emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) which is harmful to atmosphere and could also cause other series of relevant environmental problems (Mao et al., 2018, Szanto et al., 2007). Many researchers also confirmed that the loss of nitrogen caused by N2O emission during the composting could reach 0.09–3.8% (Fukumoto et al., 2006), and the production of CH4 accounts for about 0.8–6% of the total carbon mass of compost (Wolter et al., 2004, Hao et al., 2004). According to the report of IPCC, the global warming potential (GWP) of CH4 and N2O are 25 (CH4) and 298 (N2O) times higher compared to CO2, respectively, on a 100-year frame (IPCC, 2007). In addition, the ammonia (NH3) emission is also the main reason for nitrogen loss during the composting, which is the volatilization of ammonia accounts for about 20–60% of the total nitrogen loss (He et al., 2005, Pagans et al., 2006, Petersen and Sommer, 2011). Therefore, to improve the composting engineering by the amendment of organic and inorganic additives has great significance which is not only reduce the emission of GHGs and NH3 during the composting but the same time also mitigate the mobility of heavy metals and other essential nutrients (Awasthi et al., 2017b, Mao et al., 2018). There are more than thousands research papers has been published with different types of additives to reduce the GHGs and NH3 emission last one decade such as, Awasthi et al. (2016a) studied a conclusion that higher amount of zeolite mixed with lime could decrease the maximum GHGs and NH3 emission and improve quality of the composting end product, which is consistent with the result of Belyaeva and Haynes (2009). In addition, many researches also have been confirmed the effect of different amendments such as lime (Fang et al., 1999, Wong et al., 2009), zeolite (Awasthi et al., 2016a, Chan et al., 2015), bentonite (Wang et al., 2016), medical stone (Wang et al., 2017a, Wang et al., 2017b, Awasthi et al., 2018) and biochar (Li et al., 2017a, Li et al., 2017b, Zhang et al., 2014, Awasthi et al., 2017a, Awasthi et al., 2016b) and coal fly ash (Belyaeva and Haynes, 2009) as proper additives for various organic waste composting, which all could mitigate the emission of NH3 and GHGs but also conserved the nutrients.
Clay is a low-cost and widely distributed porous mineral which is mainly composed by montmorillonite and kaolinite. But none of study reported with the amendment of clay to improve the CM composting which is not only promote porosity and aeration of the compost, but also improve water absorption and encourage microbial activities. Therefore, the purpose of this experiment was to study 1) the effect of various quantities of clay to the physical and chemical characteristics of CM composting; 2) the effect of the clay additive for mitigation of NH3 and GHGs emission during CM composting; 3) finally the influence of clay amendment into the end product quality.
Section snippets
Materials collection and processing
The experiment was carried out at Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University campus. The CM used in this study was obtained from a local chicken farm (Yangling, Shanxi Province, China) and the wheat straw (WS) was purchased from local market. The WS was added to adjust the ratio of C/N and also as a kind of loosening agent to fortify the porosity of composting. WS was chopped into 1 cm−1 length before mixing by the using of pulverized to get uniform particle size. The clay used in this
Changes of temperature and pH during composting
Temperature is one of the key indicators to reflect the organic matter degradation and microbial activity of the composting. The temperature of reactor achieves 55 °C within 5–7 d and maintains more than 3 d which is one of the most important conditions to kill the pathogenic microorganisms and ensure compost hygiene indicators (Yang et al., 2013). The dynamic change of the temperature during this study is shown in Fig. 1a, which whole process can be normally divided into three stages:
Conclusion
Clay addition could promote the decomposing of CM, reduced the total nitrogen and carbon loss by the mitigation of ammonia and total GHGs emission. Among all treatments, 10% clay treatment obviously decreased total GHGs emission and achieved the standard of compost maturity in advance. The 10% clay showed significant correlation between the physiochemical properties, GHGs and ammonia emission. Therefore, in the composting practices for CM composting, 10% clay amendment could be beneficial to
Acknowledgements
We thankfully acknowledge the financial support from a Research Fund for International Young Scientists from National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31750110469), China. The Introduction of talent research start-up costs (No. Z101021803), Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China and Science and Technology Program of Yangling Demonstration Zone (China, 2017NY-24), China.
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