Reduction of the environmental footprint of thermo‐alkali pretreatment by reusing black liquor during anaerobic digestion of lignocellulosic biomasses

In this study, the effect of thermo-alkaline pretreatment and recycling of the liquid fraction (black liquor) for successive pretreatment steps on chemical composition and methane yields from horse manure was investigated. At first, horse manure was subjected to alkaline pretreatment at 70 degrees C for 1 h (8.6 g NaOH/100 g total solids). Pretreated biomass was then separated into solid and liquid fractions (black liquor). In the subsequent stages, black liquor was mixed with 20% (v/v) of fresh NaOH and was reused to pretreat subsequent batches of horse manure (cycles 1-4). Chemical analyses showed that thermo-alkaline pretreatment was effective in the delignification and solubilization of organic matter and thereby increased the holocellulose (cellulose and hemicelluloses) content in the solid fraction of horse manure. On comparison with untreated horse manure methane yields (225 +/- 1 L CH4 kg(-1) VSadded), thermo-alkaline pretreatment improved the methane yields of horse manure by 39% (313 +/- 16 L CH4 kg(-1) VSadded). However, the effectiveness of black liquor recycling on methane production decreased (from 39 to 12%) with an increase in the number of recycling steps (from 1 to 4). Nevertheless, recycling of black liquor reduced the consumption of NaOH (40%) and water use (60%). Thus, thermo-alkaline pretreatment with liquor recycling was found to be an effective pretreatment with an economic gain of 2.4 to 10.4 compared to pretreatment without recycling. (c) 2021 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd