This study investigated the effectiveness of bio-augmenting aerobic cell culture to mitigate ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emission in sewage sludge composting amended with reed straw (with the weight ratio of 1:0.3-0.4). During the 20-day aerated lab-scale composting, adding 200-mL culture (56.80 NTU) reduced ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions by 38.00% and 54.32%, and conserved total nitrogen and sulfate by 39.42% and 70.75%, respectively. Organic matters degradation was quick started 1 day ahead. Comparing to the control, nitrate content increased 38.75% at the end of the compost. Bioaugmentation evened the distributions of bacterial communities in the thermophilic phase. The shift was mainly due to 22.97% of relative abundance of Proteobacteria depressed and 157.16% of Bacteroidetes increased, which were beneficial for nitrogen conservation and glycan breakdown, respectively. In summary, the results demonstrated that bioaugmentation addition could be an effective strategy for enhanced sludge composting.
Keywords: Bacterial succession; Bioaugmentation; Compost; Hydrogen sulfide emission; Sewage sludge; nitrogen loss.
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.