Enhancing the anaerobic digestion of corn stover by chemical pretreatment with the black liquor from the paper industry

Haipeng Xu; Yan Li; Dongliang Hua; Yuxiao Zhao; Hui Mu; Honglei Chen; Guanyi Chen

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2020.123090

Enhancing the anaerobic digestion of corn stover by chemical pretreatment with the black liquor from the paper industry

Bioresour Technol. 2020 Jun:306:123090. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2020.123090. Epub 2020 Mar 2.

Authors

Haipeng Xu¹, Yan Li², Dongliang Hua², Yuxiao Zhao², Hui Mu², Honglei Chen³, Guanyi Chen⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Environment Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China; Energy Institute, Qilu University of Technology(Shandong Academy of Sciences), Shandong Key Laboratory of Biomass Gasification Technology, Jinan 250014,China).
² Energy Institute, Qilu University of Technology(Shandong Academy of Sciences), Shandong Key Laboratory of Biomass Gasification Technology, Jinan 250014,China).
³ State Key Laboratory of Biobased Material and Green Papermaking, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250353, China.
⁴ School of Environment Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China. Electronic address: chen@tju.edu.cn.

PMID: 32169512
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2020.123090

Abstract

In this work, black liquor as a waste from paper industry was used to pretreat corn stover before anaerobic digestion. The batch mode anaerobic digestion achieved a methane production up to 260.5 mL/g VS when the corn stover was pretreated the black liquor of 12 g NaOH/L alkalinity for 24 h, which was 59.1% higher than the control. In the semi-continuous mode anaerobic digestion, black liquor pretreatment increased the buffering capacity of the digestate to maintain suitable pH and total VFA/alkalinity ratio with no adverse effect resulted from the presence of ions. The structural and chemical changes of corn stover after the pretreatment were investigated to rationalize the enhanced performance of anaerobic digestion.

Keywords: Anaerobic digestion; Black liquor; Corn stover; Lignocellulose; Pretreatment.