Modelling the fate of PAH added with composts in amended soil according to the origin of the exogenous organic matter

Highlights: • The model simulates the release of PAH from compost in soil according to organic carbon degradation. • Processes that occur before compost application to the soil influenced the fate of PAHs in the soil. • The PAH dissipation was higher in incubations of mature composts. • The PAH dissipation was higher in incubations of soil amended with non-mature composts. • The model calculates the proportion of biogenic and physically bound residues of PAHs. A new model that was able to simulate the behaviours of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) during composting and after the addition of the composts to agricultural soil is presented here. This model associates modules that describe the physical, biological and biochemical processes involved in PAH dynamics in soils, along with a module describing the compost degradation resulting in PAH release. The model was calibrated from laboratory incubations using three ¹⁴C-PAHs, phenanthrene, fluoranthene and benzo(a)pyrene, and three different composts consisting of two mature and one non-mature composts. First, the labelled PAHs were added to the compost over 28 days, and spiked composts were then added to the soil over 55 days. The model calculates the proportion of biogenic and physically bound residues in the non-extractable compartment of PAHs at the end of the compost incubation to feed the initial conditions of the model for soil amended with composts. For most of the treatments, a single parameter set enabled to simulate the observed dynamics of PAHs adequately for all the amended soil treatments using a Bayesian approach. However, for fluoranthene, different parameters that were able to simulate the growth of a specific microbial biomass had to be considered for mature compost. Processes that occurred before the compost application to the soil strongly influenced the fate of PAHs in the soil. Our results showed that the PAH dissipation during compost incubation was higher in mature composts because of the higher specific microbial activity, while the PAH dissipation in amended soil was higher in the non-mature compost because of the higher availability of PAHs and the higher co-metabolic microbial activity.