TY - JOUR
T1 - Nitrogen conservation and acidity control during food wastes composting through struvite formation
AU - Wang, Xuan
AU - Selvam, Ammaiyappan
AU - Chan, Manting
AU - WONG, Jonathan W C
N1 - Funding Information:
We thankfully acknowledge the financial support from the Innovation and Technology Fund (Project No. ITS/576/09 ), Hong Kong SAR . We would like to thank the Surface analysis & Material characterization laboratory of Science faculty, HKBU for the XRD and SEM-EDS analysis, and Science faculty workshop.
PY - 2013/11
Y1 - 2013/11
N2 - One of the main problems of food waste composting is the intensive acidification due to initial rapid fermentation that retards decomposition efficiency. Lime addition overcame this problem, but resulted in significant loss of nitrogen as ammonia that reduces the nutrient contents of composts. Therefore, this study investigated the feasibility of struvite formation as a strategy to control pH and reduce nitrogen loss during food waste composting. MgO and K2HPO4 were added to food waste in different molar ratios (P1, 1:1; P2, 1:2), and composted in 20-L composters. Results indicate that K2HPO4 buffered the pH in treatment P2 besides supplementing phosphate into the compost. In P2, organic decomposition reached 64% while the formation of struvite effectively reduced the nitrogen loss from 40.8% to 23.3% during composting. However, electrical conductivity of the compost increased due to the addition of Mg and P salts that requires further investigation to improve this technology.
AB - One of the main problems of food waste composting is the intensive acidification due to initial rapid fermentation that retards decomposition efficiency. Lime addition overcame this problem, but resulted in significant loss of nitrogen as ammonia that reduces the nutrient contents of composts. Therefore, this study investigated the feasibility of struvite formation as a strategy to control pH and reduce nitrogen loss during food waste composting. MgO and K2HPO4 were added to food waste in different molar ratios (P1, 1:1; P2, 1:2), and composted in 20-L composters. Results indicate that K2HPO4 buffered the pH in treatment P2 besides supplementing phosphate into the compost. In P2, organic decomposition reached 64% while the formation of struvite effectively reduced the nitrogen loss from 40.8% to 23.3% during composting. However, electrical conductivity of the compost increased due to the addition of Mg and P salts that requires further investigation to improve this technology.
KW - Ammonia
KW - Food waste composting
KW - Nitrogen conservation
KW - Struvite
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84883216089&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.biortech.2013.07.060
DO - 10.1016/j.biortech.2013.07.060
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 23981269
AN - SCOPUS:84883216089
SN - 0960-8524
VL - 147
SP - 17
EP - 22
JO - Bioresource Technology
JF - Bioresource Technology
ER -
