UV–Visible and Fluorescence Green Waste Composts Monitoring: Material Dependency

ABSTRACT

The most frequent way to survey green waste composts is to monitor the temperature during the composting process. However, if the temperature is a good index for global biological processes, it is not for the chemical stability. In order to identify a reliable index, this work investigates water extraction coupled to spectroscopic indexes such as E₂/E₃, E₄/E₆, and SUVA₂₅₄ ratios, and fluorescence indexes such as Kalbitz, Milori, CP/PARAFAC, and Fluorescence Region Integration. The measurements of these indexes are carried out with six samples from different sites with different green waste material composition. The results show that most indexes depend on the green waste origin more than the composting time; some depend mostly on the material origin while others on compost age. A comparison of these results indicates that the biochemical process occurs more rapidly than expected by the compost producers. The combination of these indicators gives useful information on the processes that take place during composting.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the OSDIAC fund from ECCOREV research federation (ECCOREV-FR3098) and ODIAMAC project from ADEME French agency (Convention n°1506C0034) and from the Toulon University 2015-APRI-COMPOST. Part of the project was also supported by the Micro-Terra project.