Comparative environmental and economic life cycle assessment of dry and wet anaerobic digestion for treating food waste and biogas digestate

Xiao, Honggen; Zhang, Dongqing; Tang, Zhihua; Li, Kai; Guo, Hai‐Yang; Niu, Xiaojun; Yi, Linzi

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.130674

Cited by 55 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…48 The amount of biogas is about 100 m 3 per tonne of FW, where the methane content is 63% (v/v). 48 Biogas generated from the fermentation process is combusted in a CHP unit, with a power efficiency of 33% and heat efficiency of 30%. 49 After the digestate is dewatered, the liquid digestate is treated by an "Anaerobic Sludge Blanket Reactor + Membrane Bioreactor + Nanofiltration + Reverse Osmosis" (UASB + MBR + NF + RO) process before being discharged into surface water, consuming 30 kWh per tonne of liquid.…”

Section: ■ Methods and Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As illustrated in Figure (S8), FW is pretreated as slurries and then enters a mesophilic wet AD digester, where the TS content is about 10 wt % . The amount of biogas is about 100 m 3 per tonne of FW, where the methane content is 63% (v/v) . Biogas generated from the fermentation process is combusted in a CHP unit, with a power efficiency of 33% and heat efficiency of 30% .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate Change Impact of Diverse Food Waste Valorization Processes beyond Anaerobic Digestion

Guo

Liao

et al. 2023

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng.

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For the beneficial utilization of food waste (FW), valorization processes that output high-value products including carbon source alternatives for biological nutrient removal, biochar, or refuse-derived fuels (RDF) are reported to be technically and economically beneficial, while the climate change impact of these emerging valorization technologies is unclear and lacks a benchmark for comparison. In this study, the climate change impacts of six diverse valorization scenarios for FW were evaluated through a life cycle assessment and compared with that of incineration and anaerobic digestion (AD). Six valorization scenarios all exhibit better climate change benefits than incineration (−40.8 kgCO2-eq/t), and hydrolysis for the carbon source alternatives production coupled with thermal drying-RDF scenario and thermal drying-RDF scenario achieves the best (−276.8 kgCO2-eq/t) and the second-best (−224.2 kgCO2-eq/t) climate change benefits beyond AD with digestate incineration (−149.1 kgCO2-eq/t). Sensitivity analysis implies that the diverse total solid content of FW, biodrying efficiency, hydrolysis efficiency, dewatering efficiency, and energy efficiency of biomass power plants are key parameters affecting the global warming potential results. This study provided the data basis and insight for estimating the climate change relating to FW valorization decision-making.

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Section: ■ Methods and Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate Change Impact of Diverse Food Waste Valorization Processes beyond Anaerobic Digestion

Guo

Liao

et al. 2023

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng.

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“…The foreground data used in this paper were mainly provided by a company in Jiangxi, China including the data on all input-output items in the two silver separation processes and the data regarding economic value. The background data come from the Gabi database [22][23][24][25][26].…”

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison of Life Cycle Environmental Impact between Two Processes for Silver Separation from Copper Anode Slime

Zhang

Xia

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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The cost of silver separation is lowered when ammonia and hydrazine hydrate are replaced with sodium thiosulfate and sodium dithionite in the process of extracting of metallic silver from copper anode slime. The overall environmental impact of two types of copper silver separation processes from anode slime has been analyzed\using the LCA method. Through the subdivision analysis, we found the raw materials or emission items that should be improved first. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) The life cycle environmental impact of the sodium thiosulfate process is much lower than the existing process; (2) The resource and environmental impacts of the sodium thiosulfate method are mainly in the fields of climate change, photochemical smog, and ionizing radiation, exceeding two-thirds of the impact on all of the resources and environment; (3) In terms of input and output items, the main impact of the new process on the resources and the environment is concentrated on the use of sodium hydroxide, accounting for 33.98% of the total equivalent, followed by sodium thiosulfate and sodium carbonate, respectively. These input–output items are the key fields that need attention in future technology improvement.

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“…Moreover, AD process is dominated by the hydrolytic acidi cation methanogenesis pathway, the energy e ciency of which is less than 50% in the actual projects due to the thermodynamic barriers of the intermediate metabolic processes. Therefore, there is a large amount of containing highly concentrated organic matter (8000 ~ 10000 mg/L of COD), and it is di cult to reduce the COD to meet the emission standard, thus limiting the further application and commercialization value of digestate (Xiao et al,2022). At present, digestate treatment mainly refers to the treatment methods of high concentration organic wastewater such as leachate, activated sludge, membrane separation, advanced oxidation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced degradation and methane production of food waste anaerobic digestate by microbial electrolysis cell for a long-term running

Zhu

Guo

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) is a new way to enhance degradation of food waste anaerobic digestate and recover methane. Through long-term operation, the start-up method, organic load, and methane production mechanism of the digestate have been optimized. At an organic load of 4000 mg/L, MEC increased methane production by 3–4 times and COD removal by 20.3% compare with anaerobic digestion (AD). The abundance of bacteria Fastidiosipila and Geobacter, which participated in the acid degradation and direct electron transfer in the MEC, increased dramatically than that in the AD. The dominant methanogenic archaea in the MEC and AD was Methanobacterium (44.4–56.3%) and Methanocalculus (70.05%), respectively. Geobacter and Methanobacterium dominated the MEC by direct electron transfer of organic matter into synthetic methane intermediates. MEC showed a perfect COD removal efficiency of the digestate, meanwhile CH4 as a clean energy was obtained. Thus, MEC was a promising technology for deep energy from digestate.

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Comparative environmental and economic life cycle assessment of dry and wet anaerobic digestion for treating food waste and biogas digestate

Cited by 55 publications

References 50 publications

Climate Change Impact of Diverse Food Waste Valorization Processes beyond Anaerobic Digestion

Climate Change Impact of Diverse Food Waste Valorization Processes beyond Anaerobic Digestion

Comparison of Life Cycle Environmental Impact between Two Processes for Silver Separation from Copper Anode Slime

Enhanced degradation and methane production of food waste anaerobic digestate by microbial electrolysis cell for a long-term running

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