Nitrogen fertilising products based on manure and organic residues. Supporting literature of the SYSTEMIC factsheets

Abstract

The EU H2020 project SYSTEMIC has taken up the challenge to recover nutrients from animal manure and biowaste. Biowaste, like animal manure, sewage sludge and food and feed waste, forms the most abundant waste stream in Europe and hence the most prominent potential resource for the production of biogas and the recovery and reuse of mineral nutrients like phosphorus (P), nitrogen (N) and potassium (K). The application of nutrient recovery from waste is hindered by regulatory requirements amongst others the Nitrates Directive 91/676/EEG. This report gives an overview of the agronomic and environmental performance of nitrogen fertilising products made from manure. These products are ammonium sulphate and ammonium nitrate from air scrubbers and ammonia strippers, mineral concentrates produced by reverse osmosis, condensated ammonia water from capturing ammonia and liquid digestate produced by separation of digestate. For each fertilising product the state of the art of information on the technology, characteristics, composition, agronomic effectivity and risk assessment on contaminants, pathogens and other components is given. The information is condensed to a factsheet. These factsheets are also found at the website of the SYSTEMIC product (https://systemicproject.eu/downloads/).

Managing organic resources in agriculture: future challenges from a scientific perspective

“…The development of anaerobic digestion for biogas production has given rise to digestate which is commonly used as fertilizer (Saveyn and Eder, 2014). In addition, innovative technologies were developed such as (physico-)chemical treatment, stripping, and membrane filtration to recover N and P and to produce soil conditioners (Lemmens et al, 2007;Foged et al, 2011;Ehlert and Schoumans, 2015). Separation technologies such as screw press, centrifuge, belt press with and without flocculants/polymers are used to separate manures into a liquid and solid fraction with different compositions (Aguirre-Villegas et al, 2019;Guilayn et al, 2019;Grell et al, 2023).…”

“…Separation technologies such as screw press, centrifuge, belt press with and without flocculants/polymers are used to separate manures into a liquid and solid fraction with different compositions (Aguirre-Villegas et al, 2019;Guilayn et al, 2019;Grell et al, 2023). Ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate are derived by stripping of ammonia with sulfuric acid or nitric acid, respectively (Lemmens et al, 2007;Foged et al, 2011;Ehlert and Schoumans, 2015). From the liquid fraction of manure, mineral NP(K) concentrates are produced using reversed osmosis technologies (Aguirre-Villegas et al, 2019;Guilayn et al, 2019;Grell et al, 2023).…”

Greenhouse gas emissions from a sandy loam soil amended with digestate-derived biobased fertilisers – A microcosm study

“…Based on the compositional differences of these novel BBFs, compared to the unprocessed digestate, it can be assumed that their behaviour as fertilisers could differ considerably. While a few studies have investigated the soil fertilisation potential of these novel BBFs (Ehlert et al, 2019;Sigurnjak et al, 2017), there is a paucity of data on their GHG emission potential when applied to the soil.…”