Stabilization of biomass ash granules using accelerated carbonation to optimize the preparation of soil improvers.

After the revision of the Fertilizer Regulation (EC 2019/1009), biomass ash can be used as component material for soil improvers to be placed on the EU market. This provides opportunities for large scale recycling of biomass ash. However, this material cannot be directly applied to soil without stabilization by carbonation, which also creates an opportunity for CO ₂ capture and storage. Here, accelerated carbonation in an atmospheric fixed-bed reactor (AFR) was applied to prepare ash granules (AG). Relative humidity of gas, temperature, reaction time and CO ₂ concentration were optimized and further tested in a closed high-pressure reactor (HPR). Materials resulting from both reactors were compared with those obtained after 1-year of carbonation under atmospheric conditions. This study showed that AFR accelerated tests resulted in a significant reduction of the reaction time than HPR to achieve a similar pH adjustment. Also, under 100 vol.% CO ₂ atmospheric conditions, pH and electrical conductivity reached target values faster than under 15 vol.% CO ₂ conditions. Based on results obtained here we recommend AFR operating at 25 °C and 100 vol.% CO ₂ for 20 h, as the optimal procedure for stabilization of AG. In this study we provide evidence that accelerated carbonation enables a much faster and cost-efficient preparation of potentially valuable soil additives than natural carbonation. Also, leaching tests revealed that plant nutrient availability (B, Mg, Mn, Mo and P) was increased under accelerated carbonation compared to natural carbonation. The present work paves the way towards the development of optimized protocols to effectively recycle biomass ashes for soil recovery.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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