Modeling Water Flow and Phosphorus Sorption in a Soil Amended with Sewage Sludge and Olive Pomace as Compost or Biochar

Abstract

Organic amendments are often reported to improve soil properties, promote plant growth, and improve crop yield. This study aimed to investigate the effects of the biochar and compost produced from sewage sludge and olive pomace on soil hydraulic properties, water flow, and P transport (i.e., sorption) using numerical modeling (HYDRUS-1D) applied to two soil types (Terra Rosa and Rendzina). Evaporation and leaching experiments on soil cores and repacked soil columns were performed to determine the soil water retention, hydraulic conductivity, P leaching potential, and P sorption capacity of these mixtures. In the majority of treatments, the soil water retention showed a small increase compared to the control soil. A reliable fit with the modified van Genuchten model was found, which was also confirmed by water flow modeling of leaching experiments (R2 0.99). The results showed a high P sorption in all the treatments (Kd 21.24 to 53.68 cm3 g−1), and a high model reliability when the inverse modeling procedure was used (R2 0.93–0.99). Overall, adding sewage sludge or olive pomace as compost or biochar improved the Terra Rosa and Rendzina water retention and did not increase the P mobility in these soils, proving to be a sustainable source of carbon and P-rich materials.

Impact of biochar amendments on soil water and plant uptake dynamics under different cropping systems

“…In this regard, HYDRUS (Arora et al, 2011;Karandish & Šimůnek, 2018;Šimůnek et al, 2016;Turkeltaub et al, 2018) has been successfully used to simulate biochar effects on soil hydraulic properties (Arabyarmohammadi et al, 2018;Filipović et al, 2020;Horel et al, 2019;Wu et al, 2019). However, the majority of these studies have focused entirely on short-term effects (e.g., 48 h-85 days) of biochar application (Altdorff et al, 2019;Filipović et al, 2020; F I G U R E 1 Conceptual diagram of HYDRUS 1-D simulation domain demonstrating control and biochar amendment scenarios for two cropping systems. AS-2, almond shell; ATC-1, almond pruning; WS-2, walnut shell.…”

“…However, a gap currently exists in quantifying the impact of locally produced biochar from mobile pyrolysis units and connecting it to changes in soil hydraulic properties and crop yield under short term to midterm applications. In this regard, HYDRUS (Arora et al., 2011; Karandish & Šimůnek, 2018; Šimůnek et al., 2016; Turkeltaub et al., 2018) has been successfully used to simulate biochar effects on soil hydraulic properties (Arabyarmohammadi et al., 2018; Filipović et al., 2020; Horel et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2019). However, the majority of these studies have focused entirely on short‐term effects (e.g., 48 h–85 days) of biochar application (Altdorff et al., 2019; Filipović et al., 2020; Horel et al., 2019; Stylianou et al., 2021; Wu et al., 2019).…”

Production strategies and potential repercussion of sewage sludge biochar as a futuristic paradigm toward environmental beneficiation: A comprehensive review

“…Property of soil • Increased activity of enzyme (Deng et al, 2003) • Water retention has been improved. Phosphorus sorption has been increased (Filipović et al, 2020) • Soil pH has been raised, electrical conductivity has been reduced, and heavy metal uptake has been diminished (Gwenzi et al, 2016) • Enrichment of C, increment in microbial biomass, reduced mobility of Cd (Shao et al, 2019) • Improvement in field capacity, water storage capacity, wilting point, and texture soils. Bulk density has been reduced (Razzaghi et al, 2020) • N, pH, C, and efficiency use of microbes have been improved, and Cd, Pb content have been (Huang et al, 2016) woodchips (Grobelak et al, 2019).…”

“…Therefore, methods should be developed to reduce SS waste and subsequent greenhouse gas emissions toward soil functionality improvisation with carbon sequestration (Sun, Chen, et al., 2020). Accordingly, exploiting the SS into biochar has numerous environmental benefits, such as reducing GHGs emissions (Filipović et al., 2020; Ghosh et al., 2020; Gwenzi et al., 2016), managing groundwater pollutant levels (Lee et al., 2017); enhancing soil carbon sequestration (Ghosh et al., 2020; Gwenzi et al., 2016), and decreasing the volume of abandoned sludge (Deepesh et al., 2016). Alternatively, SSB produced by pyrolysis and incineration are the thermal processes that have variable degrees of efficacy.…”

Geochemical Modelling of Inorganic Nutrients Leaching from an Agricultural Soil Amended with Olive-Mill Waste Biochar

“…are employed to study the reactive transport of organic and inorganic substances within the pores of biochar-amended soils.. Most of them simulate the sorption of nutrients such as P [35,36] and other contaminants such as heavy metals [37]. The proposed models are fitted to experimental data to estimate the fate of elements in the solution under variably saturated media.…”