Garden & outdoors

Compost carbon–nitrogen mass balance

Combine supplied dry-mass carbon and nitrogen compositions.

Compost carbon–nitrogen mass balance
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Your inputs

Comma-separated headings shown in the example. Up to 1,000 source rows; keep this project table small enough to review.

Up to 25 MB per file, 50,000 data rows, 200 columns and 2 million data cells. Fully blank rows and columns are ignored before row, column and cell limits are checked. Individual tools may have smaller result or chart limits.

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A clear answer. Here’s how.

Sums dry mass × carbon/nitrogen mass fraction separately and divides total carbon by total nitrogen. Requires positive total nitrogen and carbon plus nitrogen percentages no greater than 100 for each material. Uses supplied dry-basis composition rather than generic material values. Does not predict moisture, decomposition, heat generation or a suitable recipe.

See a worked example

Worked example

A fixed demonstration, separate from the values you enter above.

Project CSV
Material,DryKg,CarbonPct,NitrogenPct
Dry leaves,5,45,1
Green material,3,40,3

Example result

Example result
MaterialDry mass (kg)Carbon mass (kg)Nitrogen mass (kg)
Dry leaves52.250.05
Green material31.20.09

Blended dry-mass C:N = 24.642857142857142:1. Uses your supplied dry-basis composition; moisture, biology and decomposition rate are not inferred.

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