Highly Porous and Nutrients-Rich Biochar Derived from Dairy Cattle Manure and Its Potential for Removal of Cationic Compound from Water

Abstract

The use of biochar in the horticulture and crop fields is a recent method to improve soil fertility due to its porous features and rich nutrients. In the present study, dairy manure (DM) was used as a biomass precursor in the preparation of highly porous biochar (DM-BC) produced at specific conditions. Based on N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations, the resulting biochar featured its microporous/mesoporous textures with a BET surface area of about 300 m2/g and total pore volume of 0.185 cm3/g, which could be a low-cost biosorbent for the effective removal of methylene blue (MB) from the aqueous solution. As observed by the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), the primary inorganic nutrients on the surface of DM-BC included calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), potassium (K), phosphorus (P), silicon (Si), sulfur (S), sodium (Na) and aluminum (Al). Furthermore, the resulting biochar was investigated in duplicate for its biosorption performance of cationic compound (i.e., methylene blue, MB) from the aqueous solution with various initial MB concentrations and DM-BC dosages at 25 °C. The findings showed that the biosorption kinetic parameters fitted by the pseudo-second order rate model with high correlations were consistent with its porous features. These experimental results suggested that the porous DM-based biochar could be reused as a biosorbent, biofertilizer, or soil amendments due to the high porosity and the abundance in nutrient minerals.

Pongamia pinnata L. Leaves Biochar Increased Growth and Pigments Syntheses in Pisum sativum L. Exposed to Nutritional Stress

“…The elongation (or better coverage of roots) in PLB-amended rhizosphere in our study supports an earlier mesocosm study that concluded that the addition of biochar (charcoal fines from mixed-deciduous wood in this case) to the rhizosphere effectively elongates the plant roots [64]. Addition of biochar to aridic calcareous soil very likely increases total pore volume [65], decreases bulk density [66], and enhances cation exchange capacity (CEC) of soil system [66]. The decreasing bulk density and increasing porosity, CEC, and nutrient holding capacity in response to increasing black carbon (or biochar) in soil were also verified in an x-ray absorption microscopic study [34,67].…”

Characterization of Biochars Produced from Dairy Manure at High Pyrolysis Temperatures

“…The dairy manure (DM) for producing biochar was obtained from the livestock farm at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (Pingtung, Taiwan). Details on the DM pretreatment were described in the previous studies [21][22][23].…”

“…In this work, the thermochemical properties of DM, including proximate analysis, ultimate (elemental) analysis, calorific (heating) value, inorganic elements, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), were conducted to evaluate the potential for producing porous biochar at adequate pyrolysis conditions. Again, details on the thermochemical analysis of oven-dried DM were described previously [21][22][23].…”

Enhancing the Pore Properties and Adsorption Performance of Cocoa Pod Husk (CPH)-Derived Biochars via Post-Acid Treatment

“…Among the carbonization conditions that influence the pore properties of biochar, the pyrolysis temperature could be the most important process parameter [24]. According to the results previously studied [15,25], the CPH-based biochar products (denoted as CPH-BC-400, CPH-BC-500, CPH-BC-600, CPH-BC-700 and CPH-BC-800) were produced under a nitrogen flow (500 cm 3 /min) atmosphere at the following carbonization conditions: temperatures of 400-800 • C, residence time of 30 min and heating rate of 10 • C/min. Using 10 g for each pyrolysis experiment, the yields of the CPH-based biochar products showed the values ranging from 40.70% at 400 • C to 30.22% at 800 • C. Subsequently, the biochar products (i.e., CPH-BC-400 and CPH-BC-800) were separately mixed with 0.25 M HCl (Merck Co., Darmstadt, Germany) solution (about 100 cm 3 ) on a hot-plate where the solution was heated to about 75 • C for 30 min.…”

“…Referring to the previous study [25], the adsorption kinetics of the optimal biochar (i.e., CPH-BC-800-AW) was preliminarily tested in an agitating tank for the removal of methylene blue (MB) from 2 L of aqueous solution. The adsorption conditions were fixed at the solution temperature of 25 • C biochar dosage of 0.3 g and agitation speed of 200 rpm, but changed in the initial MB concentrations (i.e., C o = 5, 10, and 15 mg/L).…”