An Improvement In The Technique For Composting Livestock Manure On The Cold Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Compositing livestock manure on the cold Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a feasible way to utilize manure while alleviating negative environmental effects. In order to overcome unfavorable factors of cold temperature and shortage of manpower for composting operation,orthogonal experiment was used to study the size of the pile, turning frequency, initial moisture content of process parameters on the impact of these three alpine region organic fertilizer compost. It was found that pile base length of 1.8m or greater and compost initial moisture content of about 65% of the raw material, turning one time was appropriate process parameters. Then we developed a new technique for composting livestock manure on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau:static ventilation-double-layer film insulation and studied the effect of it. The static ventilation had been achieved by ventilation pipes implanted in compost stacks while double-layer film mulching had prevented heat loss from composting process. Composting trials showed that compared with pile turning over, the static ventilation pipes significantly shortened the time for temperature rise and reduced the temperature difference between interior and outer layers of compost stacks, and thus speeded up the composting process meanwhile reducing losses of nutrients during composting. The double-layer film mulching further helped maintain the temperature of compost stacks. We suggested that by this new technique, the operation of overturning compost stacks is not a necessity for composting livestock manure. Adding phosphorus fertilizers to manure for composting also helped to increase temperature but this had a possibility to increase losses of nitrogen and organic matters from composts.