Char from chicken manure: physico-chemical characterization

Valentina Marsalaa; Giulia Cima; Claudio De Pasqualea; Anna Micalizzia; Pellegrino Conte a*; Alessandro Pozzib; Massimo Valagussac; Giuseppe Alonzoa Dipartimento Sistemi Agro Ambientali - Universit degli Studi di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze 13, I-90128 Palermo; b AGT - Advanced Gasification Technology, Via Trieste 2, I-22060 Arosio (CO); c MAC - Minoprio Analisi e Certificazioni, Viale Raimondi 54, I-22070 Vertemate con Minoprio (CO) E-mail: pellegrino.conte@unipa.it Keywords: Relaxometry, TOC, Remediation Samples were also incubated with copper solutions in order to monitor biochar capacity to Chicken manure is an excellent organic bind a heavy metal. fertilizer that contains large amount of nutrients Results and Discussion as among which nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium play the major role. Results revealed that porosity of biochar is Intensive animal operations result in affected by the muffle residence time and considerable amounts of chicken manure. This temperature. latter, in order, is a serious environmental In fact, 1H T1 relaxometry profiles (Figure 1) problem due to its potential to create social risks, because of odors, and nitrate leaching into soils showed that heterogeneity enhancement of pore size distributions occurred as affected by the and groundwater [1] [2]. Reduction of environmental and social risks length of the thermal treatment. In particular, the longer the muffle residence due to chicken manure demands for a correct time, the larger appeared the pore sizes of the recycling process. resulting carbonaceous material (i.e. intensity For this reason, pyrolysis of chicken manure enhancement of the longest T1 component). represents a valid solution to obtain a N-rich In addition, NMRD profiles (data not shown) biochar that can be applied as amendant to revealed the presence of quadrupolar dips due enhance soil fertility [3]. to the quadrupolar interactions between water The aim of the present study is the evaluation 14 and N. According to literature [4], quadrupolar of the relaxometry characteristics of the biochar dips can be observed only when immobilized produced from chicken manure obtained from N-rich systems are present in the system. an Italian egg-producing farm located in Sicily. For this reason, we can state that a Chicken manure retrieved from a Sicilian egg transformation of the inorganic N towards farm was pyrolized at different temperatures organic forms of nitrogen has been obtained (400, 500 and 600C) applied for three different during the thermal treatment. heating times (10,30 and 120 min.). Heating temperature affected also compound Dynamic properties of water-saturated release in water, in fact the largest levels of TOC biochars were retrieved via fast field cycling were observed in biochar obtained at 400C as NMR relaxometry, in order to obtain information reported in Figure 2. on pore size distribution. Finally, investigation on the binding capacity of In addition, solid phase micro extraction the different-temperature-obtained chicken (SPME) with gas chromatography mass manure biochars revealed that the material spectrometry (GC-MS) was applied to evaluate retrieved at 500 C after a muffle residence time compound released in deionized water at of 120 min can adsorb more than 90% of copper different pH values. ion, thereby suggesting that this biochar can be Moreover total carbon (TC), total inorganic applied for environmental remediation from carbon (TIC) and total organic carbon (TOC) heavy metals. contents were also measured. Introduction
a

Chicken manure
50 45

10min 30min 120min

Signal x Neper of Relaxation Time %

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

10

100

1000

Relaxation Time (T1 ms)

Fig. 1. H T1 relaxometry profiles (Thermal treatment at 400C).

Fig. 2. Total organic carbon content at different heating temperatures. Conclusion This study revealed that pyrolysis is a suitable approach to transform chicken manure in environmentally and agronomically relevant material. Further studies are at the moment going on in order to define better the chemical composition of the different chicken manure biochars. ____________________
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30, 298-307. 2 Mengchun G.; Bing L.; An Y.; Fangyuan L.; Lijuan Y.; Yanxia S. 2010. The effect of aeration rate on forced-aeration composting of chicken manure and sawdust, in Bioresource Technology, 101, 1899-1903. 3 Seth O.T.; Takatsugu H.; Tsutomu M. 2008.Effects of carbonized and dried chicken manures on the growth, yeld and nitrogen content of soybean, in Plant Soil, doi 10.1007/s 11104-008-9573-9. 4 Kimmich R.; Anoardo E. 2004. Field-cycling NMR relaxometry, in Progress in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, 44, 257-320.