Environmental Biotechnology Group (EBiTG), Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee 247667, India.
Department of Civil Engineering, Jamia Millia Islamia (A Central University), New Delhi 110025, India.
Waste Manag. 2021 Apr 1;124:17-25. doi: 10.1016/j.wasman.2021.01.032. Epub 2021 Feb 14.
Management of agro-waste is a major challenge globally due to inefficient disposal techniques, which concominantly leads pollution and loss of renewable bioenergy. Anaerobic digestion of agro-waste is one of the ways to tackle this problem but hindered by the recalcitrant nature of agro-waste. This study investigated the effect of granular activated carbon (GAC) and granular biochar (GBC) addition to enhance the thermophilic anaerobic co-digestion of wheat husk and sewage sludge. The conductive materials (particle size: 2-5 mm) were added separately at five different concentrations: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 g/L. The findings revealed that samples amended with GAC and GBC at 20 g/L dosage had the highest biogas yield of 263 and 273 mL/gVS, respectively, corresponding to 22 and 27% higher yield than the control. Additionally, a shorter lag phase was observed in both cases compared to the Control. However, the GBC amended samples showed relatively stable biogas production compared to GAC and consistent results regarding pH, alkalinity, total volatile fatty acids, and soluble chemical oxygen demand. The preliminary techno-economic analysis indicates that addition of GAC or GBC may not be feasible and require other innovative engineered solutions for the addition of conductive materials. This study confirms that GAC and GBC amendments enhance the biogas productivity and process stability in anaerobic digestion of recalcitrant agro-waste under the high-temperature regime and calls for further research in this direction.
农业废弃物的管理是一个全球性的主要挑战，原因是处理技术效率低下，随之而来的是污染和可再生生物能源的损失。农业废弃物的厌氧消化是解决这个问题的方法之一，但受到农业废弃物顽固性的阻碍。本研究调查了添加颗粒状活性炭（GAC）和颗粒状生物炭（GBC）对提高小麦秸秆和污水污泥高温厌氧共消化的影响。将导电材料（粒径：2-5 毫米）分别以五个不同的浓度添加：10、20、30、40、50 克/升。研究结果表明，添加 20 克/升剂量的 GAC 和 GBC 的样品具有最高的沼气产量，分别为 263 和 273 毫升/克 VS，比对照分别高出 22%和 27%。此外，与对照相比，这两种情况下的迟滞期都较短。然而，与 GAC 相比，GBC 处理的样品显示出相对稳定的沼气产量，并且在 pH 值、碱度、总挥发性脂肪酸和可溶化学需氧量方面的结果一致。初步的技术经济分析表明，添加 GAC 或 GBC 可能不可行，需要其他创新的工程解决方案来添加导电材料。本研究证实，在高温条件下，GAC 和 GBC 的添加可以提高厌氧消化中顽固性农业废弃物的沼气生产力和过程稳定性，并呼吁在这方面进行进一步的研究。
