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Effect of different multichannel ventilation methods on aerobic composting and vegetable waste gas emissions

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Abstract

Aerobic composting, especially semipermeable membrane-covered aerobic fermentation, is known to be an effective method for recycling and reducing vegetable waste. However, this approach has rarely been applied to the aerobic composting of vegetable waste; in addition, the product characteristics and GHG emissions of the composting process have not been studied in-depth. This study investigated the effect of using different structural ventilation systems on composting efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions in a semipermeable membrane-covered vegetable waste compost. The results for the groups (MV1, MV2, and MV3) with bottom ventilation plus multichannel ventilation and the group (BV) with single bottom ventilation were compared here. The MV2 group effectively increased the average temperature by 19.06% whilst also increasing the degradation rate of organic matter by 30.81%. Additionally, the germination index value reached more than 80%, 3 days in advance. Compared to those of the BV group, the CH4, N2O, and NH3 emissions of MV2 were reduced by 32.67%, 21.52%, and 22.57%, respectively, with the total greenhouse gas emissions decreasing by 24.17%. Overall, this study demonstrated a multichannel ventilation system as a new method for improving the composting efficiency of vegetable waste whilst reducing gas emissions.

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Data availability

The data presented in this study are available on request from the first author.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Social Development Project of Key Research and Development Plan in Jiangsu Province (BE2022681), the Modern Agricultural Machinery Equipment and Technology Demonstration and Promotion Program of Jiangsu Province (NJ2022-26), and the Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund (S202309 and Y2022XC08).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University (SEU), Nanjing, 210096, China

    Ruirong Li & Liang Cai

  2. Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Nanjing Institute of Agricultural Mechanization, Nanjing, 210014, China

    Ruirong Li, Jie Cao, Pengjun Wang, Haoli Qu, Mingjiang Chen & Yongsheng Chen

Authors
  1. Ruirong Li
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  2. Liang Cai
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  4. Pengjun Wang
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  5. Haoli Qu
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  6. Mingjiang Chen
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  7. Yongsheng Chen
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Contributions

RL: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, funding acquisition, writing—original draft. LC: resources; writing, review and editing; supervision; methodology. JC: data curation, formal analysis, investigation. PW: data curation, formal analysis, software. HQ: investigation, writing—review and editing. MC: writing—review and editing. YC: writing—review and editing, supervision, data curation.

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Correspondence to Liang Cai.

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Li, R., Cai, L., Cao, J. et al. Effect of different multichannel ventilation methods on aerobic composting and vegetable waste gas emissions. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 112104–112116 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30017-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30017-6

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