Improving the Anaerobic Digestion of Wine-Industry Liquid Wastes: Treatment by Electro-Oxidation and Use of Biochar as an Additive

Cristian Bernabé Arenas Sevillano, Marco Chiappero, Xiomar Gomez, Silvia Fiore and E. Judith Martínez
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Cristian Bernabé Arenas Sevillano: Chemical and Environmental Bioprocess Engineering Group, Natural Resources Institute (IRENA), University of Leon, Av. de Portugal 41, 24009 Leon, Spain
Marco Chiappero: DIATI (Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering), Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy
Xiomar Gomez: Chemical and Environmental Bioprocess Engineering Group, Natural Resources Institute (IRENA), University of Leon, Av. de Portugal 41, 24009 Leon, Spain
Silvia Fiore: DIATI (Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering), Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy
E. Judith Martínez: Chemical and Environmental Bioprocess Engineering Group, Natural Resources Institute (IRENA), University of Leon, Av. de Portugal 41, 24009 Leon, Spain

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 22, 1-17

Abstract: Wine lees have a great potential to obtain clean energy in the form of biogas through anaerobic digestion due to their high organic load. However, wine lees are a complex substrate and may likely give rise to instabilities leading to failure of the biological process. This work analysed the digestion of wine lees using two different approaches. First, electro-oxidation was applied as pre-treatment using boron-doped diamond-based electrodes. The voltage was 25 V and different treatment times were tested (ranging from 0.08 to 1.5 h) at 25 °C. Anaerobic digestion of wine lees was evaluated in batch tests to investigate the effect of electro-oxidation on biogas yield. Electro-oxidation exhibited a significant positive effect on biogas production increasing its value up to 330 L kg −1 of volatile solids after 1.5 h of treatment, compared to 180 L kg −1 of volatile solids measured from raw wine lees. As a second approach, the addition of biochar to the anaerobic digestion of wine lees was investigated; in the experimental conditions considered in the present study, the addition of biochar did not show any positive effect on anaerobic digestion performance.

Keywords: anaerobic digestion; wine lees; pre-treatment; biochar; biogas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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