Monitoring the Composting Process of Olive Oil Industry Waste: Benchtop FT-NIR vs. Miniaturized NIR Spectrometer

Miniaturized near-infrared (NIR) spectrometers are revolutionizing the agri-food industry thanks to their compact size and ultra-fast analysis capabilities. This work compares the analytical performance of a handheld NIR spectrometer and a benchtop FT-NIR for the determination of several parameters, namely, pH, electrical conductivity (EC25), C/N ratio, and organic matter as LOI (loss-on-ignition) in compost. Samples were collected at different stages of maturity from a full-scale facility that processes olive mill semi-solid residue together with olive tree pruning residue and animal manure. Using an FT-NIR spectrometer, satisfactory predictions (RPD > 2.0) were obtained with both partial least squares (PLS) and support vector machine (SVM) regression, SVM clearly being superior in the case of pH (RMSEP = 0.26; RPD = 3.8). The superior performance of the FT-NIR spectrometer in comparison with the handheld spectrometer was essentially due to the extended spectral range, especially for pH. In general, when analyzing intact samples with the miniaturized spectrometer, sample rotation decreased RMSEP values (~20%). Nevertheless, a fast and simple assessment of compost quality with reasonable prediction performance can also be achieved on intact samples by averaging static measurements acquired at different sample positions.