Abstract
Anaerobic digestion is one of the most important and advantageous processes in livestock manure treatment. Digestate, one of its byproducts, contains particularly high nitrogen levels that determine storage and disposal costs. Excess nitrogen can be managed through sequestration processes. This study assesses the potential of natural zeolite to adsorb ammonium ions from a simulated ammonium-rich digestate, and to verify its absorbency and efficiency to release fertilizer slowly to strawberry plants. The assessment considered the effects on the plant, fruit quality, prokaryotic abundances and relative abundance of bacterial and archaeal functional genes related to nitrification. Our results confirm that ammonium-enriched zeolites possess positive implications for strawberry plants and favorably influence bacterial nitrification. Natural zeolites demonstrated high sorption properties and were shown to be an efficient carrier of N to plants.
Highlights
Anaerobic digestion is one of the most important and advantageous processes in livestock manure waste management [1]
This is evidence of the equilibrium established between ammonium and zeolite
The trials demonstrated that the zeolite ammonium removal efficiency is best at a pH of about 8, which corresponds to the normal pH of the liquid fraction of digestate
Summary
Anaerobic digestion is one of the most important and advantageous processes in livestock manure waste management [1]. Any evaluation of the potential to use ammonium-enriched zeolite from anaerobic digestate as a slow release fertilizer must include an assessment of AOA and AOB. To test the effectiveness and sustainability of charging zeolite with ammonium from digestate liquid to act as a slow release fertilizer, we enriched natural zeolite (clinoptilolite) with an ammonium-rich solution that simulated field conditions, and assessed its adsorbent properties. In order to evaluate the effect on microbial communities and their potential release of nitrate into water, total bacteria (AOB) and archaea (AOA), as well as nitrogen forms, were measured in the plant substrates
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