Addition of oyster shell to enhance organic matter degradation and nitrogen conservation during anaerobic digestate composting

Lu, Ming-Yi; Shi, Xiao-Shuang; Li, Xu; Lian, Shu-Juan; Xu, Dong-Yan; Guo, Rong-Bo

Addition of oyster shell to enhance organic matter degradation and nitrogen conservation during anaerobic digestate composting

2020

Anaerobic digested residue (DR) is the main by-product from biogas plants, and it is predominantly used as organic fertilizer after composting. To resolve the problems of long duration and nitrogen loss in conventional composting, bulking agents are always added during the composting process. In this study, oyster shell (OS) was used as a bulking agent for DR composting. Four treatments were conducted by mixing DR and OS at different concentrations (0%, 10%, 20% and 30%, based on wet weight) and then composting the mixtures for 40 days. The results showed that the organic matter (OM) degradation efficiency was enhanced by 5.62%, 12.15% and 16.98% with increasing amounts of OS addition. The increased content of microbial biomass carbon in the compost indicated a suitable living environment for aerobic microbes with added OS, which could explain the increased OM degradation efficiency. Compared with the control, the NH₃ emissions in the treatments with 10%, 20% and 30% OS were decreased by 13.81%, 33.33% and 53.76%, respectively. The increase in total nitrogen content in the compost is probably due to the absorption of NH₃ by OS. Results indicated that OS is a suitable bulking agent for DR composting and that the addition of 20–30% OS can significantly enhance composting performance.

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