Journal
BIORESOURCE TECHNOLOGY
Volume 333, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2021.125190
Keywords
Anaerobic digestate utilisation; Biochar; Biogas upgrading; Circular economy; Resource recovery
Funding
- National Research Foundation, Prime Minister's Office, Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme
- National University of Singapore (NUS) grant [R-154-000-A97-133]
- National University of Singapore
- Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea [PJ01475801]
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The study investigated the application of wood waste-derived biochar in food-waste anaerobic digestion to create a circular economy. Results showed that biochar could be used to upgrade biogas, remove pollutants from digestate wastewater, and recover nutrients as a biofertilizer for vegetable cultivation.
A wood waste-derived biochar was applied to food-waste anaerobic digestion to evaluate the feasibility of its utilisation to create a circular economy. This biochar was first purposed for the upgrading of the biogas from the said anaerobic digestion, before treating and recovering the nutrients in the solid fraction of the digestate, which was finally employed as a biofertilizer for the organic cultivation of three green leafy vegetables: kale, lettuce and rocket salad. Whilst the amount of CO2 the biochar could absorb from the biogas was low (11.17 mg g-1), it could potentially be increased by modifying through physical and chemical methods. Virgin as well as CO2-laden biochar were able to remove around 31% of chemical oxygen demand, 8% of the ammonia and almost 90% of the total suspended solids from the digestate wastewater, which was better than a dewatering process via centri-fugation but worse than the industry standard of a polytetrafluoroethylene membrane bioreactor. Nutrients were recovered in the solid fraction of the digestate residue filtered by the biochar, and utilised as a biofertilizer that performed similarly to a commercial complete fertilizer in terms of aerial fresh weight growth for all three vegetables cultivated. Contingent on the optimal upgrading of biogas, the concept of a circular economy based on biochar and anaerobic digestion appears to be feasible.
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