Review of biochar role as additive in anaerobic digestion processes

Marco Chiappero, Omid Norouzi, Mingyu Hu, Francesca Demichelis, Franco Berruti, Francesco Di Maria, Ondřej Mašek and Silvia Fiore

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2020, vol. 131, issue C

Abstract: Anaerobic digestion (AD) could be considered as a mature technology and nowadays it can still play a pivot role because of the urgent need to provide renewable energy sources and efficiently manage the continuously growing amount of organic waste. Biochar (BC) is an extremely versatile material, which could be produced by carbonization of organic materials, including biomass and wastes, consistently with Circular Economy principles, and “tailor-made” for specific applications. The potential BC role as additive in the control of the many well-known critical issues of AD processes has been increasingly explored over the past few years. However, a clear and comprehensive understanding of the connections between BC and AD is still missing. This review paper analyses and discusses significant references (review articles, research papers and international databases and reports), mostly published in the last 10 years. This review is aimed at addressing three key issues related to the better understanding of the BC role in AD processes: 1. Investigation of the influence of BC properties on AD performances and of their ability to counteract its main challenges; 2. Assessment of the optimal BC production chain (i.e. feedstock-pyrolysis-activation) to achieve the desired features; 3. Evaluation of the economic and environmental advantages connected to BC use in AD processes, compared to conventional solutions applied to address AD challenges.

Keywords: Anaerobic digestion; Biochar; Bioenergy; Biomass; Circular economy; Waste (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032120303282
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:131:y:2020:i:c:s1364032120303282

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2020.110037

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().