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Ammonia Volatilization from Turkey Litter Application in a Pine Plantation in South Carolina

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Paper number  054077,  2005 ASAE Annual Meeting . (doi: 10.13031/2013.19691) @2005
Authors:   Felipe Montes, John P. Chastain
Keywords:   Ammonia volatilization, nitrogen losses, land application, turkey litter, pine forest

Ammonia volatilization was measured after land application of Turkey litter to a 20 year old pine stand in Sand Hills State Forest, SC. The wind tunnel technique was used to measure volatilization immediately after manure spreading on nine volatilization events within the forest stand. Volatilization results were fitted to the exponential function Y= a(1-e-Kt) where Y was the total volatilization of ammonia expressed as percent of total ammoniacal nitrogen (TAN) applied at time t after application, a was the potential volatilization loss expressed as percent of TAN applied, K is a rate constant parameter with units min-1 and t is the time in minutes after application was completed. Volatilization losses ranged from 8.6 to 57.1 % of the TAN applied, which were equivalent to 7 % to 47% of the total nitrogen applied. The volatilization process was found to be dependent on the mass of turkey litter applied per unit area expressed as Tons litter/ha, the mass of TAN applied per unit area expressed as g TAN/ m2 and the percent total solids content of the litter; variation of total volatilization losses was found to be explained by a regression equation that included those variables. The rate constant for ammonia volatilization of Turkey manure averaged 0.0025 min-1. The rate constant was found to be different from values for similar liquid manure applications. These differences were attributed to the mass transfer characteristics of the materials.

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