Department of Civil, Environmental, Architectural Engineering and Mathematics, University of Brescia, Via Branze 43, 25123, Brescia, Italy; Department of Water Supply, Sanitation and Environmental Engineering, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Westvest 7, P.O. Box 3015, 2601 DA, Delft, the Netherlands; College of Natural and Computational Sciences, Department of Chemistry, Mekelle University, P.O. Box 231, Mekelle, Ethiopia.
Department of Water Supply, Sanitation and Environmental Engineering, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Westvest 7, P.O. Box 3015, 2601 DA, Delft, the Netherlands.
J Environ Manage. 2021 Jul 15;290:112537. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112537. Epub 2021 Apr 14.
The generation of huge amounts of food waste due to the increasing population is a serious global issue. The inadequate management of food waste and lack of proper handling approaches have created adverse negative impacts on the environment and the society. The use of traditional disposal (i.e. landfilling) and treatment (i.e. incineration and composting) methods are not considered to be efficient for managing food waste. Thus, anaerobic digestion (AD) has proven to be promising and cost-effective, as an alternative technology, for digesting and converting food waste into renewable energy and useful chemicals. However, mono-digestion of food waste suffers from process inhibition and instability which limit its efficiency. Adding biochar that has high buffering capacity and ensures optimum nutrient balance was shown to enhance biogas/methane production yields. This review reports on the physicochemical characteristics of food waste, the existing problems of food waste treatment in AD as well as the role of biochar amendments on the optimization of critical process parameters and its action mechanisms in AD, which could be a promising means of improving the AD performance. Also, this review provides insights regarding the selection of the desired/appropriate biochar characteristics, i.e. depending on the source of the feedstock and the pyrolysis temperature, and its role in enhancing biogas production and preventing the problem of process instability in the AD system. Finally, this review paper highlights the economic and environmental challenges as well as the future perspectives concerning the application of biochar amendments in AD.
由于人口增长而产生的大量食物浪费是一个严重的全球问题。食物浪费管理不善，缺乏适当的处理方法，对环境和社会造成了不利的负面影响。传统的处理（即填埋）和处理（即焚烧和堆肥）方法被认为不能有效地管理食物垃圾。因此，厌氧消化（AD）已被证明是一种很有前途且具有成本效益的替代技术，可用于消化和转化食物垃圾为可再生能源和有用的化学品。然而，食物垃圾的单消化存在过程抑制和不稳定性的问题，限制了其效率。添加具有高缓冲能力并确保最佳养分平衡的生物炭被证明可以提高沼气/甲烷的产量。本文综述了食物垃圾的物理化学特性、AD 中食物垃圾处理的现有问题以及生物炭添加剂对优化关键工艺参数及其在 AD 中的作用机制的作用，这可能是提高 AD 性能的一种有前途的方法。此外，本文还介绍了生物炭特性的选择（取决于原料来源和热解温度），以及其在提高沼气产量和防止 AD 系统中过程不稳定方面的作用。最后，本文重点介绍了生物炭添加剂在 AD 中的应用所面临的经济和环境挑战以及未来展望。
