review · ACS Omega
Agricultural waste generation is rising rapidly alongside expanding food production and intensive livestock operations. While aerobic composting converts these organic residues into sterilised, stable organic fertilisers that decrease reliance on synthetic inputs, traditional composting presents notable limitations. Conventional methods demand substantial surface area, require protracted fermentation cycles, generate unpleasant odours, and suffer heavy losses of organic carbon and nitrogen. Incorporating specific additives offers a viable pathway to overcome these drawbacks. Additives directly influence key composting parameters such as moisture, pH, and temperature. They also accelerate the breakdown of organic matter by stimulating microbial activity, curtail greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions, and restrict mineral ion mobility. Consequently, additive-mediated composting produces nutrient-rich organic fertiliser with improved maturity and reduced phytotoxicity, supporting circular economic models and more sustainable agricultural waste management.
Rapidly expanding agricultural waste poses severe environmental risks if not treated efficiently. Traditional composting is slow and loses critical nutrients through emissions. Understanding how additives enhance composting enables the faster production of high-quality organic fertiliser. This reduces dependence on chemical fertilisers, curbs greenhouse gas emissions, and transforms problematic organic residues into useful soil amendments within a circular economy.
The findings point to applications in commercial organic fertiliser production and agricultural waste treatment facilities. Waste management operators and fertiliser manufacturers could utilise additive-mediated composting to shorten processing times, mitigate offensive odours, and boost product nutrient content. Because this work is a review evaluating broader composting technologies and additive mechanisms, the underlying approaches appear applied and tested, although specific additive formulations require local optimisation for practical market adoption.
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Agriculture waste has increased annually due to the global food demand and intensive animal production. Preventing environmental degradation requires fast and effective agricultural waste treatment. Aerobic digestion or composting uses agricultural wastes to create a stabilized and sterilized organic fertilizer and reduces chemical fertilizer input. Indeed, conventional composting technology requires a large surface area, a long fermentation period, significant malodorous emissions, inferior product quality, and little demand for poor end results. Conventional composting loses a lot of organic nitrogen and carbon. Thus, this comprehensive research examined sustainable and adaptable methods for improving agricultural waste composting efficiency. This review summarizes composting processes and examines how compost additives affect organic solid waste composting and product quality. Our findings indicate that additives have an impact on the composting process by influencing variables including temperature, pH, and moisture. Compost additive amendment could dramatically reduce gas emissions and mineral ion mobility. Composting additives can (1) improve the physicochemical composition of the compost mixture, (2) accelerate organic material disintegration and increase microbial activity, (3) reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) and ammonia (NH<sub>3</sub>) emissions to reduce nitrogen (N) losses, and (4) retain compost nutrients to increase soil nutrient content, maturity, and phytotoxicity. This essay concluded with a brief summary of compost maturity, which is essential before using it as an organic fertilizer. This work will add to agricultural waste composting technology literature. To increase the sustainability of agricultural waste resource utilization, composting strategies must be locally optimized and involve the created amendments in a circular economy.
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DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.3c06516
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