COMPOST BIODEGRADATION BY ~1H MAGNETIC RESONANCE AND QUANTITATIVE RELAXATION TOMOGRAPHY

摘要

About one-third of worldwide food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted, entailing both a waste of energy and emissions of greenhouse gas. The production of food waste (hereinafter FW) covers all the food life cycle: from farming phase, up to both industrial manufacturing and processing, and retail and household1. A best practice is to use wastes from one industrial sector as input for other industrial sectors, to minimize world wastes. One of the most used practice of reusing food residues is the production of compost. The collection and composting of organic waste from both households and industries has long been recognized as a valuable contribution to waste management. The first step towards a "zero-waste" concept, in particular in the food processing sector, is the identification, quantification and characterization of residues. For this reason, considerable efforts has been focused towards the definition of compost maturity in order to decide on the quality of a compost. Therefore the principal requirement of a compost for its safe use, e.g. in soil, is a high degree of maturity, which implies a stable organic matter (OM) content and the absence of phytotoxic compounds and plant or animal pathogens.