Distribution trend of 14 trace elements was studied in digestate under air exposure;DGT was used as trace elements fractionation tool to assess the labile fraction;Aeration promoted dissolution of Al, As, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Mo and Pb;Forced aeration promoted an increase of labile Al, As, Co, Mo, Ni, Sb, Se and W;Al, As, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn and Pb were mainly present as particulate despite aeration.
AbstractThe use of digestate as amendment for agricultural soils has already been proposed as an 1 alternative to mineral fertilizers or undigested organic matter. However, little information is 2 available concerning the effect of digestate atmospheric exposure on trace elements speciation 3 and, consequently, on their mobility and bio-accessibility when digestate is stored in open tanks *Manuscript Click here to view linked References and Pb, suggesting a possible increase in their mobility that may likely occur during storage in 11 open tanks or handling before land spreading. Labile elements' fraction increased only during 12 forced aeration (except for Fe and Mn), suggesting that their short-term bio-accessibility can 13 increase only after significant aeration as the one assumed to occur when land spreading takes 14 place. 15 Keywords Metals Metalloids Digested sewage sludge Fractionation Diffusive Gradients in Thin Films (DGT) Speciation or 5×10 -3 M NaOH and 0.5 M H 2 O 2 for 24 hours for Chelex and Zr-binding gels, respectively 131 (see Table S1 for elution yields). The concentration of labile TEs, C DGT, was then derived using 132 equation (1) based on Fick's first law (Zhang and Davison, 1995): 133 , Eq. (1) 134 where Δ MDL is the thickness of the material diffusion layer (i.e. diffusive gel plus membrane, 0.89 135 mm), t is the time of DGT samplers' exposure in the sludge (24h), D is the coefficient of 136 diffusion of the considered element and A is the geometric area of the DGT holder window (3.14 137 cm 2 ). D values were taken from literature (Table S2) and corrected for the average temperature 138 recorded during each deployment using Stokes-Einstein relation (Zhang and Davison, 1999).
281Patrice Fondanèche is acknowledged for his assistance in the laboratory, especially during ICP-282 MS and MP-AES analyses. 283