Feasibility study on using combined tomography and spectroscopy techniques to evaluate the physical and chemical characteristics of organo-mineral fertilisers

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dc.contributor.authorSakrabani, Ruben
dc.contributor.authorMosca, Sara
dc.contributor.authorLiptak, Alexander
dc.contributor.authorBurca, Genoveva
dc.date.accessioned2025-06-24T13:21:38Z
dc.date.available2025-06-24T13:21:38Z
dc.date.freetoread2025-06-24
dc.date.issued2025-06-04
dc.date.pubOnline2025-06-04
dc.description.abstractFertilisers play a key role in agriculture, providing key nutrients needed by crops to ensure a secure food supply. However, with increasing prices and rising environmental concerns, there is a growing need to rely on alternative and sustainable fertiliser sources, introducing the opportunity to use organic amendments to formulate organo-mineral fertilisers (OMF). Despite their environmental advantages, the inherent variability in composition of organic amendments within OMF poses a challenge for their standardization. This study aims to use OMF derived from anaerobic digestate and coupled with carbon capture technologies to analyze for its physical characteristics and chemical composition using neutron computed tomography (NCT), X-ray computed tomography (XCT) and Raman spectroscopy (RS). This is a feasibility study to assess using non-destructive techniques on OMF as previously this has not been explored. This work represents the first attempt to utilize a combination of imaging techniques to investigate on OMF and demonstrates their feasibility for measuring the variability between individual samples. This is a proof-of-concept study which shows that combining NCT and XCT can provide images on how uniformly packed each OMF pellet are. The use of RS is to characterize OMF is more challenging largely due to the high fluorescence background arising from its matrix. This study needs to be further developed to enable image-based analysis using machine learning algorithms to determine characteristics of large batches of OMF. Further development is needed building on this work to quantify OMF pellet characteristics so that it can be confidently used as novel fertilisers in agriculture.
dc.description.journalNameFrontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
dc.description.sponsorshipThe authors would like to acknowledge funding received from the STFC Food Network + which supported this work and encouraged collaboration with scientists at STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Diamond Light Source.
dc.identifier.citationSakrabani R, Mosca S, Liptak A, Burca G. (2025) Feasibility study on using combined tomography and spectroscopy techniques to evaluate the physical and chemical characteristics of organo-mineral fertilisers. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, Volume 9, June 2025, Article number 1570461en_UK
dc.identifier.eissn2571-581X
dc.identifier.elementsID673615
dc.identifier.issn2571-581X
dc.identifier.paperNo1570461
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2025.1570461
dc.identifier.urihttps://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/24054
dc.identifier.volumeNo9
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherFrontiersen_UK
dc.publisher.urihttps://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2025.1570461/full
dc.relation.isreferencedbyhttps://doi.org/10.57996/cran.ceres-2762
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subject3002 Agriculture, Land and Farm Managementen_UK
dc.subject30 Agricultural, Veterinary and Food Sciencesen_UK
dc.subject41 Environmental Sciencesen_UK
dc.subject2 Zero Hungeren_UK
dc.subject30 Agricultural, veterinary and food sciencesen_UK
dc.subject41 Environmental sciencesen_UK
dc.subjectorgano-mineral fertilisersen_UK
dc.subjectsoil nutrientsen_UK
dc.subjectneutron computed tomographyen_UK
dc.subjectRaman spectroscopyen_UK
dc.subjectX-ray computed tomographyen_UK
dc.titleFeasibility study on using combined tomography and spectroscopy techniques to evaluate the physical and chemical characteristics of organo-mineral fertilisersen_UK
dc.typeArticle
dcterms.dateAccepted2025-05-07

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