Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bolzonella, D.
• Fatone, F.
• Gottardo, M.
• Frison, N.

Titel

Nutrients recovery from anaerobic digestate of agro-waste: Techno-economic assessment of full scale applications

Ist Teil von

• Journal of environmental management, 2018-06, Vol.216, p.111-119

Ort / Verlag

England: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The sustainable production of fertilizers, especially those based on phosphorus, will be one of the challenges of this century. Organic wastes produced by the agriculture, urban and industrial sectors are rich in nutrients which can be conveniently recovered and used as fertilizers. In this study five full scale systems for the recovery of nutrients from anaerobic digestate produced in farm-scale plants were studied. Monitored technologies were: drying with acidic recovery, stripping with acidic recovery and membrane separation. Results showed good performances in terms of nutrients recovery with average yields always over 50% for both nitrogen and phosphorus. The techno-economic assessment showed how the specificity of the monitored systems played a major role: in particular, membranes were able to produce a stream of virtually pure water (up to 50% of the treated digestate) reducing the digestate volume, while drying, because of the limitation on recoverable heat, could treat only a limited portion (lower than 50%) of produced digestate while stripping suffered some problems because of the presence of suspended solids in the liquid fraction treated. Specific capital and operational costs for the three systems were comparable ranging between 5.40 and 6.97 € per m3 of digestate treated and followed the order stripping > drying > membranes. Costs determined in this study were similar to those observed in other European experiences reported in literature. •The sustainable production of fertilizers is requested for intensive agriculture.•Organic wastes are rich in nutrients.•These nutrients are easily recoverable in anaerobic digestate.•Five full scale applications for nutrients recovery were monitored.•The techno-economic features of the systems were defined.