Treatment and Valorization of Agro-Industrial Anaerobic Digestate Using Activated Carbon Followed by Spirulina platensis Cultivation

Ángela Sánchez-Quintero, Marie-Ange Leca, Simona Bennici, Lionel Limousy, Florian Monlau and Jean-Baptiste Beigbeder ()
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Ángela Sánchez-Quintero: APESA, Pôle Valorisation, 64121 Montardon, France
Marie-Ange Leca: APESA, Pôle Valorisation, 64121 Montardon, France
Simona Bennici: Institut de Science des Matériaux de Mulhouse (IS2M—UMR CNRS UHA 7361), Axe Transports, Réactivité, Matériaux pour des Procédés Propres (TRM2P), Université de Haute Alsace (UHA), 68093 Mulhouse, France
Lionel Limousy: Institut de Science des Matériaux de Mulhouse (IS2M—UMR CNRS UHA 7361), Axe Transports, Réactivité, Matériaux pour des Procédés Propres (TRM2P), Université de Haute Alsace (UHA), 68093 Mulhouse, France
Florian Monlau: APESA, Pôle Valorisation, 64121 Montardon, France
Jean-Baptiste Beigbeder: APESA, Pôle Valorisation, 64121 Montardon, France

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-13

Abstract: The increased production of biogas through the anaerobic digestion (AD) process has raised several concerns regarding the management of liquid digestate, which can present some environmental risks if not properly handled. Among the different techniques to treat AD digestate, microalgae and cyanobacteria cultivation has emerged as a sustainable approach to valorizing digestate while producing valuable biomass for production of biofuels and high value bioproducts. However, the intrinsic parameters of the liquid digestate can strongly limit the microalgae or cyanobacteria growth as well as limit the uptake of residual nutrients. In this study, the detoxification potential of activated carbon (AC) was evaluated on agro-industrial liquid digestate prior to Spirulina platensis cultivation. Different doses of AC, ranging from 5 to 100 g/L, were tested during adsorption experiments in order to determine the adsorption capacity as well as the removal efficiency of several compounds. Experimental results showed the high reactivity of AC, especially towards phosphate (PO 4 -P), total phenol (TP) and chemical oxygen demand (COD). At a dosage of 50 g/L, the AC pretreatment successfully achieved 54.7%, 84.7% and 50.0% COD, TP and PO 4 -P removal, corresponding to adsorption capacity of 94.7 mgDCO/g, 17.9 mgTP/g and 8.7 mgPO 4 -P/g, respectively. Even if the AC pretreatment did not show significant effects on Spirulina platensis growth during toxicity assays, the AC adsorption step strongly participated in the digestate detoxification by removing hardly biodegradable molecules such as phenolic compounds.

Keywords: cyanobacteria; Spirulina platensis; activated carbon; detoxification; anaerobic digestate; nutrients; circular economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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