Mechanism of Nitrogen Loss and Reduction in Nitrogen Loss during the Compost of Chicken Manure

Outdoor pilot scale experiments, lasted for 70 days, were conducted to investigate the changes of pH value, temperature, NH_4-N, NO_3-N, ammonia volatile potentiality and total nitrogen during aerobic co-composting of chicken manure and rice straw. Both mass loss and nitrogen loss were evaluated on the basis of the invariant absolute value of ash content. The results showed ammonia volatileness was an important way of nitrogen loss in the compost of chicken manure. The nitrogen loss rate was the highest during the early 21 days composting and reached above 15% after 70 days composting. Adding 1% rice straw into chicken manure could reduce the loss by 2.52 percentage point.