A study of odor emission characteristics from human waste/livestock manure treatment facilities in Korea

Odor from human waste/livestock manure treatment facilities has the potential to cause significant annoyance and to impact the amenity. In this study, odor emission characteristics at unit process of 38 human waste/livestock manure treatment facilities were evaluated using composite odor concentration and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) concentration. The values of composite odor concentration (geometry mean) and H2S concentration (median) for screening and storage basin were higher than those for the other treatment processes. The composite odor concentration and H2S concentration were distributed over a wide area in each process. Composite odor concentration (dilution ratio) was found to have the significant correlation with H2S concentration (p = 0.000 < 0.05). The H2S concentration accounted for 83.2% (human waste treatment facilities), 86.8% (livestock manure treatment facilities) of composite odor concentration.