Abstract
Three compost, from widely different composting processes (a garden compost and two municipal plants for solid waste treatment), were investigated for their biomass C and ninhydrin-N content at different stages of the compo sting period. Biomass C in all the 3 compost reached a maximum at the end of the thermophilic phase, maintained a high content throughout the mesophilic phase and then decreased with a trend that roughly parallels temperature
Biomass ninhydrin-N showed a regular decreasing trend during the whole composting period. A similar behaviour was observed for non fumigated ninhydrin-N. This parameter, reflecting the release of extracellular enzymes and the intensity of ammonification processes, could represent itself a useful parameter to evaluate compost stability.
The ratio between biomass C and ninhydrin-N increased in the first month of the process and decreasing afterwards to values within the range normally found in soils (14–33), suggesting a change in the composition of microbial population during composting process.
The percentage of biomass ninhydrin-N respect to total N, showed lower values in stabilized compost respect to compost in the early stage of decomposition. The trend observed in the 3 different composting processes, suggests that a low Cbio/nin-Nbio together with a ninhydrin-Nbio content about 1 % of the total N would indicate a well stabilized compost.
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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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de Nobili, M., Baca, M.T., Fornasier, F., Mondini, C. (1996). Ninhydrin Reactive Nitrogen of CHCl3 Fumigated and Non Fumigated Compost Extracts as a Parameter to Evaluate Compost stability. In: de Bertoldi, M., Sequi, P., Lemmes, B., Papi, T. (eds) The Science of Composting. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1569-5_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1569-5_25
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