Effect of corn stalks addition on odors and leachate reduction during kitchen waste composting

If kitchen waste is composted alone, it will produce a large number of leachate and odor substances which seriously polluted the environment. In this study, two experiments were conducted, one experiment was that kitchen waste was composted alone, another experiment was that cornstalks as an additive according to the wet weight ration of 1:3 were added to the kitchen waste composting. The maturity indices, leachate and the main odors emission were analyzed in two experiments. The results indicated that compared with no additive, better compost product was obtained on the experiment having additive on the basis of temperature, pH value, electrical conductivity, C/N ratio and germination index, and cornstalks as additive could effectively dilution the salinity during kitchen waste composting. Furthermore, although the mean concentration of ammonia increased by 3.3% when cornstalks were added to kitchen waste composting, the mean concentration of dimethyl sulfide, hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan decreased by 62.3%, 67.9% and 49.6%, respectively. There were 32.6% leachate generated during the kitchen waste composting, and adding cornstalks avoided the leachate generate. Therefore, cornstalks as an additive has a significant role in improving the maturity and controlling the leachate and odor emissions during kitchen waste composting.