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Biochar amendment to advance contaminant removal in anaerobic digestion of organic solid wastes: A review

Bioresource Technology 2021 54 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count.
Chuanren Qi, Rui Wang, Sumeng Jia, Jie Chen, Yangyang Li, Jiaxing Zhang, Guoxue Li, Wenhai Luo

Summary

This review examined how biochar amendment improves anaerobic digestion of organic solid wastes by enhancing biodegradation, reducing inhibitory substances, and facilitating removal of contaminants such as antibiotics, heavy metals, microplastics, and PAHs, proposing mechanisms by which biochar's porous and conductive properties drive these benefits.

Body Systems

Anaerobic digestion (AD) has been widely applied to convert organic solid wastes into biogas, a renewable energy, and digestate, a bio-fertilizer, to sustain waste management. Nevertheless, several vexing contaminants in OSWs restrict digestate application in agriculture. Biochar has been evidenced to effectively improve AD by promoting organic biodegradation and alleviating the accumulation of inhibitory substances (e.g. ammonia and volatile fatty acids). Furthermore, biochar could advance contaminant removal in AD given its highly porous, conductive and alkaline features. Thus, this review aims to highlight the role of biochar amendment to advance contaminant removal in AD of OSWs. Key contaminants, such as antibiotics, heavy metals, microplastics, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, furfural and 5-hydroxy methyl furfural (5-HMF) that ubiquitously present in OSWs were demonstrated. The underlying mechanisms of biochar to amend the removal of these contaminants by AD were discussed. Furthermore, future perspectives to the development of biochar-assisted AD for OSWs treatment were provided.

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