Effect of inoculating flower stalks and vegetable waste with ligno-cellulolytic microorganisms on the composting process.

A lab-scale composting experiment was carried out using vegetable and flower stalks waste to study the effectiveness of ligno-cellulolytic microorganisms (LCMs) obtained from the previous isolation on composting process, especially on enhancement of biodegradation rate of these organic materials. The addition of LCMs to compost showed promised to be a valuable asset by rendering timely benefits in efficiency, maturity, and quality of the composting. This was evidenced by a significant increase of temperature, O2 consumption and CO2 emission, and population density of LCMs in compost mass compared with that of biotic (addition of culture of horse feces) and abiotic (1% molasses amendment) treatments, as well as control trial. The phytotoxicity assay showed that the substrate became mature after 60 days' composting. The LCMs inoculation enhanced the biodegradation of the composting materials as evidenced by an increasing screening ratio (1.2 cm sieve pore) of 34.5% in the treated trail, compared with that of control, which elucidated that big advantage of adding selected inoculants over other treatment, and screening ratio is a reasonable index to compare the quality of different compost. However, the inoculation seemed to have no significant effect on the moisture content, pH, and the final organic carbon of the composting materials.

[Application of high-efficient cellulose utilization microorganisms in co-composting of vegetable wastes and flower stalk].

An inoculation composing 17 species of cellulose utilization microorganisms was used in co-composting of vegetable wastes and flower stalk, and the efficiency of the inoculation on lignocellulose degradation was studied. The experiments result show that at the beginning of the first stage of composting, inoculating cellulose utilization microorganism in the substrates with 0.5% (V/V) can improve the biomass of the microorganisms into the substrates greatly and make them dominant ones. When the temperature was controlled as 55 degrees C, the biomass of cellulose utilization microorganisms can keep between [symbol: see text] 3.84 x 10(9)-1.80 x 10(10) CFU/g. At the beginning of the second stage, inoculating with 1% (V/V) can improve the temperature during this period effectively. Monitoring of the content of lignocelluloses in the substrate shows that the inoculation of cellulose utilization microorganism can accelerate the degradation of cellulose. The degradation efficiency of cellulose under inoculation condition is 23.64% higher than those without inoculation. This shows that inoculating with cellulose utilization microorganisms in each stage of the composting can greatly decompose the lignocellulose in the substrates, accelerate the co-composting process and improve the quality of composting production.