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Biochar promotes methane production during anaerobic digestion of organic waste

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Abstract

Climate change and energy demand are calling for more sustainable fuels such as biomethane produced by anaerobic digestion of organic waste. Biochar addition to waste is presumed to enhance the efficiency of methane production, yet individual reports disclose contradictory results. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis of 27 selected publications containing 156 paired measurements of control and biochar-amended treatments to assess the impact of biochar on the methanogenic performance. Results show that biochar promotes biomethane production substantially with a high Hedge's d value of 5.7 ± 1.04, yet sporadic publications report a methane decline. Methanogenic performance is statistically controlled by feedstock type, pyrolysis temperature and biochar concentration, but not controlled by pH, size, surface area and methanogen species. These findings should help to tune the parameters of anaerobic digestion with biochar to optimize biomethane productions. Moreover, our results cast some doubt on the efficiency of adding biochar to soil to sequester carbon in soils because biochar promotes methane generation and, in turn, emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 42077025) and Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS (2021213). We thank the editors and reviewers for helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Coastal Biology and Biological Resources Utilization, Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yantai, 264003, People’s Republic of China

    Leilei Xiao, Quan Wang & Fanghua Liu

  2. CAS Key Laboratory of Coastal Environmental Processes and Ecological Remediation, Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yantai, 264003, People’s Republic of China

    Leilei Xiao & Fanghua Liu

  3. Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Coll France, CEREGE, Avenue Louis Philibert, 13100, Aix en Provence, France

    Eric Lichtfouse

  4. State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China

    Eric Lichtfouse

  5. Department of Chemical Engineering, Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Chennai, 603110, India

    P. Senthil Kumar

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  1. Leilei Xiao
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  2. Eric Lichtfouse
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  3. P. Senthil Kumar
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  4. Quan Wang
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  5. Fanghua Liu
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Contributions

LX and EL designed the research. LX and QW collected the data. LX, EL, SK, FL analyzed the data. LX and EL wrote the article.

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Correspondence to Leilei Xiao or Eric Lichtfouse.

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Xiao, L., Lichtfouse, E., Kumar, P.S. et al. Biochar promotes methane production during anaerobic digestion of organic waste. Environ Chem Lett 19, 3557–3564 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-021-01251-6

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