Measuring the organic amendment properties of the liquid fraction of digestate.

The liquid fraction (LF) of digestate has usually been proposed as a substitute for mineral fertilizers because of the presence of high N content, above all in easily available form (ammonia). The LF was reported to contain about 66% of dry matter from the digestate. This study reports the characterization of the organic carbon (OC) contained in the LF of digestates obtained from full scale plants by screw-press solid/liquid separation, to find out about their organic amendment properties.

Potential agronomic and environmental properties of thermophilic anaerobically digested municipal sewage sludge measured by an unsupervised and a supervised chemometric approach.

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is the most widely used method of sewage sludge treatment (SS) before its agricultural use. AD achieves the required "sterilisation" of pathogens and is able to cover the energy required by the process, reducing pre-treatment costs, thanks to the production of biogas. The SS agronomic (fertilizer properties), environmental (pollutants contents) characteristics and nuisance to people (odours and pathogens) need to be evaluated together for the safe and useful deployment of SS in agriculture.

Solid and liquid fractionation of digestate: Mass balance, chemical characterization, and agronomic and environmental value.

Solid-liquid (S/L) separation of digestate (D) represents a simple technology able to produce two fractions having different composition. The aim of this work was to study the effect of S/L separation on dry matter (DM), nitrogen (TKN), phosphorus (PO) and heavy metals (HM) repartition into these two fractions and to characterize them. Therefore, thirteen full-scale digestion plants were studied and D, LF and SF were collected during three seasons of the year.

The role of biological processes in reducing both odor impact and pathogen content during mesophilic anaerobic digestion.

Mesophilic anaerobic digestion (MAD) produces renewable energy, but it also plays a role in reducing the impact of digestates, both by reducing odor and pathogen content. Ten full-scale biogas plants characterized by different plant designs (e.g.

On-field study of anaerobic digestion full-scale plants (Part II): new approaches in monitoring and evaluating process efficiency.

Biogas plants need easy and practical tools for monitoring and evaluating their biological process efficiency. As soon as, in many cases, biomass supply present considerable costs, full-scale anaerobic digestion (AD) processes must approach, as much as possible, the potential biogas yield of the organic mixture fed to the biodigesters. In this paper, a new indicator is proposed (the bio-methane yield, BMY), for measuring the efficiency in full-scale AD processes, based on a balance between the biochemical methane potential (BMP) of the input biomass and the residual BMP of the output materials (digestate).

Assessing amendment and fertilizing properties of digestates from anaerobic digestion through a comparative study with digested sludge and compost.

Digestate, with biogas represents the final products of anaerobic digestion (AD). The methane-rich biogas is used to produce electricity and heat, whereas the digestate could be valorized in agriculture. Contrarily to well-recognized biomasses such as digested sludge and compost, the properties of the digestate are not well known and its agricultural use remains unexplored.