The Urgent Need to Re-engineer Nitrogen-Efficient Food Production for the Planet

Pikaar, Ilje; Matassa, Silvio; Rabaey, Korneel; Laycock, Bronwyn; Boon, Nico; Verstraete, Willy

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75163-4_3

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 111 publications

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“…62 One of the dominant protein sources in feed applications on the world market is soy, 63 whose cultivation contributes significantly to the continuous deforestation of the Amazon. [64][65][66] Sustainable agriculture must therefore focus on methods of nutrient recycling to reuse existing minerals and intensify the search for alternative protein sources with fewer negative environmental impacts. Current research ascribes strong potential to biogas plants in this context, considering them a central pillar of a sustainable bioeconomy.…”

Section: The Biogas Plant As a Hub In The Sustainable Bioeconomymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The production and transportation of these minerals is, however, very resource intensive and the future availability of fossil‐based mineral fertilizers remains unstable . One of the dominant protein sources in feed applications on the world market is soy, whose cultivation contributes significantly to the continuous deforestation of the Amazon . Sustainable agriculture must therefore focus on methods of nutrient recycling to reuse existing minerals and intensify the search for alternative protein sources with fewer negative environmental impacts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The replacement of maize (Zea mays L.) by cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum L.) as biogas substrate and its implications for the energy and material flows of a large biogas plant

Cossel

Amarysti

Wilhelm

et al. 2020

Biofuels Bioprod Bioref

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Excessive cultivation of maize (Zea mays L.) as a biogas substrate has fired debate about potential land‐use change effects of bioenergy cropping systems. Cup plant ( Silphium perfoliatum L.) is a perennial biogas crop that provides more environmental services than maize. This study investigated (i) how to replace maize with cup plant as a biogas substrate in a large‐scale biogas plant located in southwest Germany, and (ii) how to optimize the energy and material cycles of such a biogas plant given the new feedstock. The biogas plant produces 1000 m3 biogas per hour with plans for it to be combined with a large dairy farm (1000 dairy units). It was found that the substitution of maize with cup plant as a biogas substrate results in a methane yield reduction of 10% to 20% due to lower biomass yields. However, there exists a strong potential to increase both biomass yields and biogas substrate quality of cup plant by optimizing establishment procedures and better genotypes. Furthermore, cup plant provides food and shelter for open land animals, including birds and insects, and could hence be a suitable alternative to maize for large biogas plants, being more environmentally beneficial. Extracting proteins from cup‐plant biomass could also help replace soy with locally produced protein for feeding cattle. Hydrothermal carbonization is a promising tool for closing nutrient cycles and for extracting phosphate from digestate, but more research is needed before it can be put into practice. © 2020 The Authors. Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining published by Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Section: The Biogas Plant As a Hub In The Sustainable Bioeconomymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The replacement of maize (Zea mays L.) by cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum L.) as biogas substrate and its implications for the energy and material flows of a large biogas plant

Cossel

Amarysti

Wilhelm

et al. 2020

Biofuels Bioprod Bioref

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“…It was already produced at industrial scale in the 1970s (Matassa et al 2016a, Pikaar et al 2017a, when MP was often referred to as single cell protein (SCP). In 1976, the UNESCO science price was awarded to 'large-scale and low-cost production of single cell proteins from oil' (Pikaar et al 2017b). The bacterial protein product, called Pruteen ® , produced from methanol, was commercialized by Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd in 1980.…”

Section: Microbial Based Biomass For Protein Rich Animal Feedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon emission avoidance and capture by producing in-reactor microbial biomass based food, feed and slow release fertilizer: Potentials and limitations

Pikaar

Vrieze

Rabaey

et al. 2018

Science of The Total Environment

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To adhere to the Paris Agreement of 2015, we need to store several gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon annually. In the last years, a variety of technologies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon capture and usage (CCU) have been demonstrated. While conventional CCS and CCU are techno-economically feasible, their climate change mitigation potentials are limited, due to limited amount of CO2 that can be captured. Hence, there is an urgent need to explore other CCS and CCU routes. Here we discuss an interesting alternative route for capture of carbon dioxide from industrial point sources, using CO2-binding, so-called autotrophic aerobic bacteria to produce microbial biomass as a C-storage product. The produced microbial biomass is often referred to as microbial protein (MP) because it has a crude protein content of ~70-75%.Depending on the industrial production process and final quality of the produced MP, it can be used for human consumption as meat replacement, protein supplement in animal diets, or slowrelease organic fertilizer thus providing both organic nitrogen and carbon to agricultural soils.Here, we discuss the potentials and limitations of this so far unexplored CCU approach. A preliminary assessment of the economic feasibility of the different routes for CO2 carbon avoidance, capture and utilization indicates that the value chain to food is becoming attractive and that the other end-points warrant close monitoring over the coming years.

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“…Reverse osmosis, electrodialysis, and other electrochemical processes rely on ammonium being the dominant cation, and will generally concentrate other cations also (particularly monovalents) . All of these methods have been demonstrated on streams with high ammonium concentrations (>2 g/L NH 4 –N) such as digestate, source separated urine, and a limited range of industrial wastewater streams as shown in Table . The only ammonium recovery techniques (apart from adsorption) that have shown feasibility at low concentrations of 40–60 mg/L NH 4 –N are assimilative uptake in microbial cells, which recovers biomass, not ammonium, and reverse osmosis, which is nonselective toward ammonium, and requires substantial pretreatment.…”

Section: Current Technologies For Ammonium Recovery From Wastewatermentioning

confidence: 99%

Mainstream Ammonium Recovery to Advance Sustainable Urban Wastewater Management

Cruz

Law

Guest

et al. 2019

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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134

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Throughout the 20th century, the prevailing approach toward nitrogen management in municipal wastewater treatment was to remove ammonium by transforming it into dinitrogen (N 2 ) using biological processes such as conventional activated sludge. While this has been a very successful strategy for safeguarding human health and protecting aquatic ecosystems, the conversion of ammonium into its elemental form is incompatible with the developing circular economy of the 21st century. Equally important, the activated sludge process and other emerging ammonium removal pathways have several environmental and technological limitations. Here, we assess that the theoretical energy embedded in ammonium in domestic wastewater represents roughly 38−48% of the embedded chemical energy available in the whole of the discharged bodily waste. The current routes for ammonium removal not only neglect the energy embedded in ammonium, but they can also produce N 2 O, a very strong greenhouse gas, with such emissions comprising the equivalent of 14−26% of the overall carbon footprint of wastewater treatment plants. N 2 O emissions often exceed the carbon emissions related to the electricity consumption for the process requirements of WWTPs. Considering these limitations, there is a need to develop alternative ammonium management approaches that center around recovery of ammonium from domestic wastewater rather than deal with its "destruction" into elemental dinitrogen. Current ammonium recovery techniques are applicable only at orders of magnitude above domestic wastewater strength, and so new techniques based on physicochemical adsorption are of particular interest. A new pathway is proposed that allows for mainstream ammonium recovery from wastewater based on physicochemical adsorption through development of polymer-based adsorbents. Provided adequate adsorbents corresponding to characteristics outlined in this paper are designed and brought to industrial production, this adsorption-based approach opens perspectives for mainstream continuous adsorption coupled with side-stream recovery of ammonium with minimal chemical requirements. This proposed pathway can bring forward an effective resource-oriented approach to upgrade the fate of ammonium in urban water management without generating hidden externalized environmental costs.

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The Urgent Need to Re-engineer Nitrogen-Efficient Food Production for the Planet

Cited by 15 publications

References 111 publications

The replacement of maize (Zea mays L.) by cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum L.) as biogas substrate and its implications for the energy and material flows of a large biogas plant

The replacement of maize (Zea mays L.) by cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum L.) as biogas substrate and its implications for the energy and material flows of a large biogas plant

Carbon emission avoidance and capture by producing in-reactor microbial biomass based food, feed and slow release fertilizer: Potentials and limitations

Mainstream Ammonium Recovery to Advance Sustainable Urban Wastewater Management

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