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Biochar Production and Modification for Environmental and Agricultural Applications
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Biochar Production and Modification for Environmental and Agricultural Applications

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "A4: Bio-Energy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 March 2022) | Viewed by 4277

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Le Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
NUS Environmental Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 1 Create Way, Create Tower #15-02, Singapore 138602, Singapore
Interests: biomass energy engineering; waste-to-resource technologies; environmental microbial technologies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Biochar technologies have gained increased interest over the past two decades due to a large number of successful applications in the environmental and agricultural fields. As a renewable, inexpensive, highly porous, carbon-rich and conductive biomaterial, biochar has demonstrated its efficiency in adsorption, wastewater treatment, biofuel, soil amendment, carbon sequestration, microbial fermentation, carbon-based catalyst preparation, and so on. The physicochemical characteristics of biochar play an essential role in its efficiency among various applications. Therefore, in the past decade, substantial research efforts have focused on enhanced biochar production and subsequent physicochemical modifications (e.g., engineered biochar) to further extend its applications in the environmental and agricultural fields. Regarding biochar production, gasification is one of the most commonly used technologies. By manipulating the process parameters such as temperature and residence time, the properties of biochar can be modified according to the user’s demand. In recent years, production of biochar through CO2 gasification of biomass or organic wastes is regarded as a promising way to simultaneously achieve waste management, biochar production, and carbon sequestration.

In the global context of circular economy, biochar technologies are being currently developed in an extremely fast manner. This Special Issue aims to encourage and advance the research of biochar production technologies and biochar application in the environmental and agricultural fields. In this Special Issue of Energies, we invite you to contribute with a paper covering state-of-the-art or emerging aspects of biochar production and modification for environmental and agricultural applications. Such contributions could cover novel systems, methods, and technologies for biochar production; new products based on biochar and biochar-related application in solving/mitigating various environmental and agricultural problems; modification methodologies for engineered biochar; new characterization protocols for biochar products; environmental impact and techno-economic assessment of biochar; biochar material used as additive, catalyst, and adsorbent; biochar market and economy. 

Dr. Le Zhang
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • biochar production
  • bioprocess kinetics
  • engineered biochar
  • biochar modification
  • gasification biochar
  • soil amendment
  • environmental protection
  • CO2 sequestration
  • biomass gasification
  • biochar adsorbent
  • biochar-based materials
  • biochar additive
  • biochar catalysts
  • waste management
  • wastewater treatment
  • resource recovery
  • anaerobic digestion
  • fermentation
  • environmental sustainability

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 1201 KiB  
Article
The Influence of Biochar Augmentation and Digestion Conditions on the Anaerobic Digestion of Water Hyacinth
by Jessica Quintana-Najera, A. John Blacker, Louise A. Fletcher, Douglas G. Bray and Andrew B. Ross
Energies 2022, 15(7), 2524; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en15072524 - 30 Mar 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1867
Abstract
The augmentation of biochar (BC) during anaerobic digestion (AD) has been identified as a potential strategy for improving the AD of complex feedstocks. This study evaluates the influence of oak wood biochar 450 °C and fermentation conditions during the AD of the invasive [...] Read more.
The augmentation of biochar (BC) during anaerobic digestion (AD) has been identified as a potential strategy for improving the AD of complex feedstocks. This study evaluates the influence of oak wood biochar 450 °C and fermentation conditions during the AD of the invasive aquatic plant, water hyacinth (WH). Factorial 22 design of experiments (DOE) allowed the evaluation of the effect of the crucial processing conditions, inoculum-to-substrate ratio (ISR) and biochar load. Further optimisation was performed to identify the best processing conditions for the AD of WH, at an ideal ISR of 1. The contour plots suggested that methane yield is favoured at biochar loads of ≤0.5%, whereas the production rate is favoured by increasing biochar loads. However, biochar addition offered no further improvement or significant effect on the digestion of WH. The subsequent AD of WH samples collected from different locations in India and Uganda exhibited variable biochemical methane potential (BMP) yields. BC addition had little effect on BMP performance, and in some cases, it even reduced the BMP. This study concludes that the amendment potential of biochar is influenced by digestion conditions and the substrate, particularly when working with complex substrates. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biochar Production and Modification for Environmental and Agricultural Applications)
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11 pages, 1145 KiB  
Communication
The Proof-of-Concept: The Transformation of Naphthalene and Its Derivatives into Decalin and Its Derivatives during Thermochemical Processing of Sewage Sludge
by Jacek Łyczko, Jacek A. Koziel, Chumki Banik and Andrzej Białowiec
Energies 2021, 14(20), 6479; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/en14206479 - 10 Oct 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1900
Abstract
One solution for sewage sludge (SS) management is thermochemical treatment due to torrefaction and pyrolysis with biochar production. SS biochar may contain toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). This study aimed to determine the process temperature’s influence on the qualitative [...] Read more.
One solution for sewage sludge (SS) management is thermochemical treatment due to torrefaction and pyrolysis with biochar production. SS biochar may contain toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). This study aimed to determine the process temperature’s influence on the qualitative PAHs emission from SS-biochar and the transformation of PAHs contained in SS. SS was torrefied/pyrolyzed under temperatures 200–600 °C with 1 h residence time. The headspace solid-phase microextraction (SPME) combined with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-MS) analytical procedure of VOCs and PAHs emission was applied. The highest abundance of numerous VOCs was found for torrefaction ranges of temperature. The increase of temperatures to the pyrolytic range decreased the presence of VOCs and PAHs in biochar. The most common VOCs emitted from thermally processed SS were acetone, 2-methylfuran, 2-butanone, 3-metylbutanal, benzene, decalin, and acetic acid. The naphthalene present in SS converted to decalin (and other decalin derivatives), which may lead to SS biochar being considered hazardous material. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biochar Production and Modification for Environmental and Agricultural Applications)
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