Combined Effects of Dewatering, Composting and Pelleting to Valorize and Delocalize Livestock Manure, Improving Agricultural Sustainability

Abstract

An agronomic strategy to mitigate climate change impact can be the build-up of soil organic carbon. Among agronomic management approaches, the administration of organic fertilizers like livestock manure represents an effective strategy to increase soil organic carbon. However, livestock manure usually contains a high amount of water, reducing its sustainable delocalization and impacting on greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient leaching. Furthermore, the possible presence of weed seeds and harmful microorganisms could reduce the agronomic value of the manure. To overcome these issues, the combined effects of dewatering, composting and pelleting were investigated on livestock manure to produce sustainable organic fertilizers. Our results showed that composting and pelleting can represent a feasible and sustainable solution to reduce the potential risks related to the presence of weed seeds and harmful bacteria, concentrating nutrients and allowing a sustainable valorization and delocalization of the livestock manure. In addition, the processed manures were assessed as fertilizers in the growing medium (GM), displaying an increase in water retention and nutrient availability and a decrease of GM temperature and weed seed emergences. However, further study is needed to validate, both in open field and greenhouse productions, the effects of the proposed fertilizers in real cropping systems.

Municipal organic waste compost replaces mineral fertilization in the horticultural cropping systems, reducing the pollution risk

“…Therefore, waste compost amendment can be considered as an agronomically interesting practice, very important for the development of sustainable low-input agricultural systems. In addition waste compost amendment may have a role in the safe waste management strategies (;Zucconi and De Bertoldi, 1986;Hargreaves et al, 2008a;Ronga et al, 2016;Ronga et al, 2019a,b;Setti et al, 2019;Bortolini et al, 2020;Ronga et al, 2020a). In fact, the agricultural utilization of MSW not only decreases the high pressure on land for landfilling, but it also improves soil fertility and acts as a soil conditioner Agrawal 2008, 2010).…”

Matured Manure and Compost from the Organic Fraction of Solid Waste Digestate Application in Intensive Apple Orchards

“…The intensive livestock sectors and the use of raw manure directly on soil could have a depleting effect on the environment considering the increase of GHG, soil, and water pollution by leaching nutrients and phytotoxic elements. The concentration of many animals in a restricted area requires the introduction of treatments, which permit manure delocalizing [ 27 , 28 , 29 ]. The fast and controlled maturation of the manure led to a product with reduced water content and high content of stabilized OM and nutrients, suitable for application in the apple orchard.…”

“…The fast and controlled maturation of the manure led to a product with reduced water content and high content of stabilized OM and nutrients, suitable for application in the apple orchard. At the same time, the process is less difficult than composting and may be managed at the farm level [ 28 , 30 ]. The greater cost of manure composting is due to transport and distribution; the creation of a small supply chain and the production of a user-friendly product (more DM content) can contribute to wider use in other agricultural sectors (such as orchards/vineyards) [ 10 , 31 , 32 ].…”

Effect of anaerobic digestate fuel pellet production on Enterobacteriaceae and Salmonella persistence

“…Pelletisation has been identified as a method to densify mechanically separated solids for transport (Ronga et al, 2020) and as a potential fuel production pathway (Cathcart et al, 2021). Previous research has explored the suitability of the solid fraction as a fuel (Czekała et al, 2018; Nagy et al, 2018; Pedrazzi et al, 2015) but has not considered the biological health and safety risks associated with material handling.…”