Correlations between sewage sludge composting physicochemical parameters and emissions of greenhouse gases and...

Mitigating the environmental impact of composting by the reduction of greenhouse gases (N₂O, CH₄) and ammonia (NH₃) emissions is a major challenge. To meet this challenge, the understanding of the relationships between composted substrates initial physicochemical parameters and gas emissions is essential. From a long-term perspective, it will allow to guide the recipe formulation of the initial mixture to be composted, with a view to reducing gas emissions during composting. This study gathered literature data targeting sewage sludge composting and performed statistical correlation analyses between cumulative gas emissions and the following parameters: sewage sludge, bulking agent and composted mixture initial physicochemical parameters (pH, dry matter, total carbon, total nitrogen, C/N), the dry mass ratio of sewage sludge to bulking agent and the duration of composting. The average values of cumulative emissions show a large variability: 1.37 ± 2.71 gC.kg initial mix DM^-1, 0.13 ± 0.17 gN.kg initial mix DM^-1 and 2.23 ± 2.79 gN.kg initial mix DM^-1 for CH₄, N₂O and NH₃ emissions respectively. Although the correlation analysis highlighted some significant interesting correlations between initial physicochemical parameters and gas emissions (p.value < 0.05), reliable multiparametric model could not fit the data, meaning that the actual literature data are not sufficient to explain most part of gas emissions. Among the most interesting relationships, the study showed that the dry matter of the composted mixture is negatively correlated to N₂O emissions, while the ratio of sewage sludge to bulking agent and the duration of composting are positively correlated to N₂O emissions. It was also shown that the pH of the bulking agent is positively correlated to NH₃ emissions. Considering the large part of the emission variability that is not explained and the difficulty to link the correlation with their causality, it will be interesting to improve composting gas emissions knowledge in future research by analyzing free air space, bulking agent adsorption capacity and available and biodegradable organic matter. These parameters are of particular interest in solving the main problems associated with sewage sludge composting, namely porosity and nitrogen retention. This study also highlighted the necessity to extend the duration of the composting studies over 40 days in order to measure possible N₂O late release and better identify parameters influencing N₂O emissions.