title: Nitrogen availability in composted poultry litter using natural amendments.
abstract: Poultry litter compost is used as fertilizer on agricultural land because of its high nutrient content. A major limitation of land application of poultry litter compost is the loss of nitrogen via NH3 volatilization. The present work was conducted to monitor nitrogen availability during composting of poultry litter with natural zeolite, expanded perlite, pumice and expanded vermiculite. Poultry litter was composted for 100 days using five in-vessel composting simulators with a volumetric ratio of natural materials:poultry litter of 1:10. It was found that natural materials significantly reduced NH3 volatilization. At the end of the process, the control treatment without any natural materials had the lowest rate of total N: 72% of the initial total N was lost from the compost made with no amendment, while 53, 42, 26 and 16% of initial total N was lost from compost containing expandable perlite, expandable vermiculite, pumice and natural zeolite, respectively.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Engineering, Ondokuz Mayis University, Samsun, Turkey. gturan@omu.edu.tr
authors.forename: N Gamze
authors.initials: NG
authors.lastname: Turan
mesh_terms: D000537:Aluminum Oxide; D000538:Aluminum Silicates; D000641:Ammonia / Q000737:chemistry; D000818:Animals; D008372:Manure; D009584:Nitrogen / Q000737:chemistry*; D011200:Poultry; D012037:Refuse Disposal; D017640:Silicates; D012822:Silicon Dioxide; D012987:Soil / Q000032:analysis*; D014835:Volatilization; D017641:Zeolites
chemical_list: D000538:Aluminum Silicates; D008372:Manure; D017640:Silicates; D012987:Soil; C003076:Perlite; C003760:vermiculite; D017641:Zeolites; D012822:Silicon Dioxide; D000641:Ammonia; D000537:Aluminum Oxide; D009584:Nitrogen; C005144:pumice