A sustainable biorefinery to convert agricultural residues into value-added chemicals

BACKGROUND: Animal wastes are of particular environmental concern due to greenhouse gases emissions, odor problem, and potential water contamination. Anaerobic digestion (AD) is an effective and widely used technology to treat them for bioenergy production. However, the sustainability of AD is compromised by two by-products of the nutrient-rich liquid digestate and the fiber-rich solid digestate. To overcome these limitations, this paper demonstrates a biorefinery concept to fully utilize animal wastes and create a new value-added route for animal waste management. RESULTS: The studied biorefinery includes an AD, electrocoagulation (EC) treatment of the liquid digestate, and fungal conversion of the solid fiber into a fine chemical—chitin. Animal wastes were first treated by an AD to produce methane gas for energy generation to power the entire biorefinery. The resulting liquid digestate was treated by EC to reclaim water. Enzymatic hydrolysis and fungal fermentation were then applied on the cellulose-rich solid digestate to produce chitin. EC water was used as the processing water for the fungal fermentation. The results indicate that the studied biorefinery converts 1 kg dry animal wastes into 17 g fungal biomass containing 12 % of chitin (10 % of glucosamine), and generates 1.7 MJ renewable energy and 8.5 kg irrigation water. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates an energy positive and freshwater-free biorefinery to simultaneously treat animal wastes and produce a fine chemical—chitin. The sustainable biorefinery concept provides a win–win solution for agricultural waste management and value-added chemical production. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13068-016-0609-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.