Based on the results obtained, the C/N ratio of the compostingmaterials from the two treatments were calculated for the pur-pose of knowing whether they were matured and ready to beused as fertilizers. The higher content of nitrogen, phosphorus,potassium, calcium, magnesium and lower content of organicmatter and organic carbon of both treatments compared to the initial chemical composition of the EFB were due to the degrada-tion of organic matter and carbon content (Schuchardt et al.,2002). During composting, maturation and stability are the crite-ria used to measure the quality of compost. An index used formeasuring compost maturity and which should be stable withtime is C/N ratio (Wong et al., 2001). The C/N ratio of the compostmaterial with decanter cake slurry and compost material withoutdecanter cake slurry at the final condition were 18.65 and 28.96,respectively. The resulting compost from the compost materialwith decanter cake slurry could be said to have reached its matu-rity stage based on this C/N ratio values (<20). The C/N ratio ofcompost material without decanter cake slurry is about 1.55times higher than compost material with decanter cake slurry.The lower C/N ratio of compost material with decanter cake slur-ry was due to the higher nitrogen content in the decanter cakeslurry. An addition of a nitrogen source can speed up the processof composting by reducing the value of C/N ratio of EFB (Vuorinenand Saharinen, 1997; Schuchardt et al., 2002). Hence, it can bededuced from Table 6 that the addition of decanter cake slurryto EFB and POME accompanied with turning can enhance the for-mation of matured compost suitable for use as fertilizer.
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