Composting of the Solid Phase of Digestate from Biogas Production: Optimization of the Moisture, C/N Ratio, and pH Conditions

The management of biodegradable wastes is increasing, including the use of waste as a source of energy. Anaerobic digestion involves organic-matter decomposition under anoxic conditions by a microbial consortium, obtaining a source of renewable energy (biogas), mainly constituted of a mixture of carbon dioxide (CO2, 25–45 percent), methane (CH4, 55–75 percent), and the digested substrate (digestate). The direct application of digestate into agricultural soils presents several problems. These include agronomic (low concentration of nutrients, high salinity, etc.), economic (cost of transport and handling), and environmental issues (gaseous emissions, nutrient leaching, and pathogen spread). However, it is possible to obtain quality compost from the solid fraction of digestate, and the compost obtained can have good properties for use as container growing medium or for crop production. In this work, an optimized procedure has been developed for composting the solid phase of a digestate obtained from a continuous, anaerobic codigestion of cattle slurry with 84 percent of cattle manure, 7.4 percent of a mixture of maize/silage, and 8.6 percent of peach-juice pulp (fresh-mass basis). The experiment was designed to optimize pH, carbon (C) / nitrogen (N) ratio, and moisture values in order to maximize self-heating activity, using Dewar self-heating tests. A factorial optimization of moisture and C/N ratio was carried out. In the best moisture-C/N ratio treatment, pH optimization was also developed. To predict the optimum conditions of the studied residue related to the increase of temperature per dry matter, a multiple correlation analysis based on moisture, C/N ratio, and pH was developed, which explained 80 percent of the variance in this experiment.