Improving methane mitigating functionality of blast furnace slag by adding electron acceptor.

Blast furnace slag (BFS), a byproduct of iron-producing process, has been applied as silicate fertilizer in rice paddy. Silicate fertilizer contains lime and silicate as main components and iron and manganese as electron acceptors. This amendment improves soil productivity and mitigates methane (CH) emissions.

Creating new value of blast furnace slag as soil amendment to mitigate methane emission and improve rice cropping environments.

Blast furnace slag (BFS), a by-product of iron making, has been utilized as silicate fertilizer in Korean and Japanese rice paddy. Silicate fertilizer, which has high contents of active iron and manganese as electron acceptor, was newly known to suppress methane (CH) emission in flooded rice paddies, but the effect of its long-term application on rice cropping environment is still debatable. To evaluate the effect of silicate fertilization on suppressing CH emissions, the changes of CH index, indicating the ratio (%) of seasonal CH flux at the silicate fertilization treatment to that at the control, were generalized using the global investigation data (42 observations from 8 fields in Bangladesh, China, and Korea).