Anaerobic Digestion and Co-Digestion of Poultry Litter Submitted to Different Reuses

Abstract

Considering the constant increase in the waste generation from poultry and pigs' husbandries, the main contributions of this study were to verify the potential of biogas production through the anaerobic digestion and co-digestion of the residues generated by these two activities, as well as to highlight the recovery of the nutrients contained in the obtained digestate. The wastes used were poultry litters after six, seven and eight production lots, as well as the sifted wastewater from one Piglets Producer Unit (PPU). Higher biogas production (p <0.05) was observed in the treatments in which anaerobic codigestion was used with the swine wastewater (SW): 0.179; 0.158 and 0.117 m 3 per kg of total solids (TS) added for poultry litters with six, seven and eight lots, respectively. It was concluded that the anaerobic co-digestion between the poultry litter and sifted swine wastewater is the best option for energy and nutrient recycling. No positive relationships were observed in the increase in the number of reuses of litter in the production of biogas and in the concentration of nutrients in the digestate.

Pre-treatment Strategies for Value Addition in Poultry Litter

“…Markou (2015) found variable BMP (50 to 150 mL g −1 ) in PL samples from Greece. In similar samples from Brazil, Vicente et al (2018) found BBP of 179, 158, and 117 L per kg for dry mass PL samples with six, seven and eight bed reuse feedlots, respectively. Marchioro et al (2018) found a BBP of 183 L kg-1 for sample of PL after 12 cycles of broiler production.…”

Broiler house litter processing by anaerobic digestion using enzymes

“…There are many studies in the literature on biogas production from poultry manure and litter [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14], but only a few [ 15,16] when biogas was produced in a mixture with sawdust. Miah [16 ] evaluated a mixture of rice hulls, sawdust and chicken excreta of broilers mixed with the cosubstrate cow dung and poultry droppings for the production of biogas.…”

“…The methane yield (percentage of methane) obtained from different biomass was the following: fresh sawdust 83 l kg -1 vsd broiler manure with slaughterhouse waste 185 l kg -1 vsd (52 %); and grain mill wastes 132 l kg -1 vsd (50 %)'' [15]. Co-digestion of poultry droppings with other substrates offers better gas yield and quality potential [10]. An Iranian research study [3] "evaluated codigestion of poultry litters and straw and found highest gas yield (0.12 m 3 CH 4 /kg VS ) and highest methane content (70.2%) at loading rates of 3.0 kg VS /m 3 -d, HRT of 15 days and operating temperatures of 35°C (95°F) (Baebee, 2013) [3], but that yield and quality dropped off significantly at higher loading rates and at lower temperatures.''…”