Upcycling food waste digestate for energy and heavy metal remediation applications
Open accessAbstract
Anaerobic digestate originating from food waste has been studied herein for two different purposes. Firstly, for combustion, co-granulation of the digestate and medium density fibreboard (MDF) dust with the addition of sodium silicate as the binder was used to produce the granular solid biofuel. It was found that increasing the content of the medium density fibreboard dust could increase the calorific value but had no significant effect on the strength of the final granules. Additionally, a significant reduction of the ash content was also observed. For heavy metal removal, granules made using the digestate and sodium silicate binder were carbonised to produce biochar which was characterised and applied as adsorbent materials. The biochar has a good removal capacity for both lead and cadmium, and the binder concentration had a positive correlation with the removal capacity of the resultant biochar. The maximum lead removal capacity (355.3 mg g−1) of biochar made using 3 wt.% sodium silicate binder, was six times more than the analogous commercial activated carbon. Langmuir model showed better fitting for adsorption data of Pb2+, while the Freundlich model showed better fitting of Cd2+. For both Pb2+ and Cd2+ kinetic data, the pseudo-second-order had a better correlation. Our approach helps aid and facilitate the concept of the circular economy by effectively up-cycling and valorising waste lignocellulosic biomass such as food waste digestate into value-added products.
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There are uncertainties around decomposition rates of various types of biochar, depending on feedstock and process conditions.
“Although considered more stable than soil organic carbon, there are certain uncertainties around decomposition rates of various types of biochar, which depends on the feedstock used and process conditions utilized (Osman et al. 2019;Chen et al. 2019).”
From Strategies for mitigation of climate change: a review (2020) · cites this paper as Chen et al. 2019
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References 40 · Cited by 58
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- McDonald, M., Hamilton, J., 2007. Recent developments in soluble silicate based binders and coatings. Conference Proceedings, Institute for Briquetting and Agglomeration.
- Authors
- Chen, H., Osman, A. I., Mangwandi, C., & Rooney, D.
- Affiliations
- Queen's University Belfast (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Osman, Ahmed I.
- Venue
- Resources, Conservation & Recycling: X
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2019-10
- Volume
- 3
- Pages
- 100015
- ISSN
- 2590-289X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2969889789
- Cited by
- 58
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 3.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Resources Conservation & Recycling X (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Research Portal (Queen's University Belfast) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Centre for Advanced Sustainable Energy
- Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland
- Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation in the Republic of Ireland
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Adsorption and biosorption for pollutant removal
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Thermochemical Biomass Conversion Processes
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Building and Construction › Recycling and utilization of industrial and municipal waste in materials production
- Keywords
- food waste digestate, anaerobic digestion, upcycling, sodium silicate binder, solid biofuels, biochar, heavy metal adsorption, lead removal, cadmium removal, carbonization, adsorption kinetics, adsorption isotherms, circular economy, lignocellulosic biomass valorization
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