The removal characteristics and diversity of a microbial community capable of ammonia removal from compost

In order to reduce the pollution and nitrogen loss resulting from ammonia emission during the composting process, a genetically stable microbial community, CC-E, capable of ammonia removal was enriched from cow feces using restrictive culture. The microbial diversity of CC-E was also investigated by 16S rRNA gene clone technology. Moreover, the effect of CC-E on composting inoculation was investigated by detecting the amount of ammonia produced. The results showed that the amount of ammonia produced from the treatments with the microbial community CC-E was 63 % lower (151.11 mg/kg) relative to the control (447.87 mg/kg) over the course of the 20-day culture period. The bacterial groups represented in the CC-E clone library were the gammaproteobacteria (16.7 %), betaproteobacteria (54.4 %), alphaproteobacteria (21.1 %), and uncultured compost bacterium (7.8 %). Furthermore, Sphingomonas sp., Serratia sp. and Alcaligenes sp. were isolated from the microbial community CC-E with ammonia removal capacity. It was found that ammonia emission was reduced to 60.7 % following CC-E inoculation during the first 20 days of composting. Nitrogen conservation was also influenced by inoculation. Results indicate that microbial community CC-E can be a useful resource for biological deodorization.