Alteration of biomass toxicity in torrefaction: A XDS-CALUX bioassay study

Łukasz Sobol; Arkadiusz Dyjakon; Marek Korendał; Marzena Styczyńska; Dominika Sabat; Antoni Szumny; Bogdan Z. Dlugogorski

doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2024.141258

Alteration of biomass toxicity in torrefaction: A XDS-CALUX bioassay study

Łukasz Sobol, Arkadiusz Dyjakon, Marek Korendał, Marzena Styczyńska, Dominika Sabat, Antoni Szumny, Bogdan Z. Dlugogorski

Energy and Resources Institute

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Abstract

Torrefaction constitutes one of the promising technologies for the management of waste biomass and the production of high-carbon products for combustion, gasification, adsorption of pollutants or soil treatment. Unfortunately, waste biomass may be contaminated with toxic persistent organic pollutants, such as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/PCDF) and dioxin-like biphenyls (dl-PCB). Literature does not provide consistent measurements on how the low-temperature thermochemical processing, such as torrefaction, affects the toxicity of biomass. This contribution assesses how a torrefaction treatment, conducted at 200 °C, modifies the toxicity due to PCDD/PCDF/dl-PCB in biomass. We deploy the XDS-CALUX biotest on five types of waste biomass (sewage sludge, tree bark, cattle manure, spent coffee ground, common reed), before and after treatment. The content of total dioxin- & biphenyl fraction compounds in the raw biomass, investigated in this study, varies from 0.14 to 3.67 pg BEQ·g⁻¹_d.m., and in the torrefied biomass between 0.17 and 6.00 pg BEQ·g⁻¹_d.m.; BEQ stands for bioanalytical equivalent. This increase is statistically insignificant at p = 0.05, taking into account all types of examined biomass. This proves that low-temperature torrefaction cannot detoxify biomass, i.e., chars, produced from biomass characterized by elevated concentration of PCDD/PCDF/dl-PCB, will reflect the contamination of the feedstocks. With respect to heavy metals, we conclude that only the content of Cd in biomass, and, to a lesser extent, the abundance of Cu and Fe, modify the toxicity of this material during its thermochemical treatment at low temperature.

Original language	English
Article number	141258
Pages (from-to)	1-10
Number of pages	10
Journal	Chemosphere
Volume	351
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2024.141258
Publication status	Published - Mar 2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The publication is financed under the individual student research project “Młode umysły—Young Minds Project” from the subsidy increased for the period 2020–2025 in the amount of 2% of the subsidy referred to Art. 387 (3) of the Law of 20 July 2018 on Higher Education and Science, obtained in 2019. This research was funded/co-founded by Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences , grant number N010/0010/22 . The APC is financed by Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors

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10.1016/j.chemosphere.2024.141258

96209653-oaFinal published version, 1.96 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Alteration of biomass toxicity in torrefaction: A XDS-CALUX bioassay study",

abstract = "Torrefaction constitutes one of the promising technologies for the management of waste biomass and the production of high-carbon products for combustion, gasification, adsorption of pollutants or soil treatment. Unfortunately, waste biomass may be contaminated with toxic persistent organic pollutants, such as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/PCDF) and dioxin-like biphenyls (dl-PCB). Literature does not provide consistent measurements on how the low-temperature thermochemical processing, such as torrefaction, affects the toxicity of biomass. This contribution assesses how a torrefaction treatment, conducted at 200 °C, modifies the toxicity due to PCDD/PCDF/dl-PCB in biomass. We deploy the XDS-CALUX biotest on five types of waste biomass (sewage sludge, tree bark, cattle manure, spent coffee ground, common reed), before and after treatment. The content of total dioxin- & biphenyl fraction compounds in the raw biomass, investigated in this study, varies from 0.14 to 3.67 pg BEQ·g−1d.m., and in the torrefied biomass between 0.17 and 6.00 pg BEQ·g−1d.m.; BEQ stands for bioanalytical equivalent. This increase is statistically insignificant at p = 0.05, taking into account all types of examined biomass. This proves that low-temperature torrefaction cannot detoxify biomass, i.e., chars, produced from biomass characterized by elevated concentration of PCDD/PCDF/dl-PCB, will reflect the contamination of the feedstocks. With respect to heavy metals, we conclude that only the content of Cd in biomass, and, to a lesser extent, the abundance of Cu and Fe, modify the toxicity of this material during its thermochemical treatment at low temperature.",

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note = "Funding Information: The publication is financed under the individual student research project “M{\l}ode umys{\l}y—Young Minds Project” from the subsidy increased for the period 2020–2025 in the amount of 2% of the subsidy referred to Art. 387 (3) of the Law of 20 July 2018 on Higher Education and Science, obtained in 2019. This research was funded/co-founded by Wroc{\l}aw University of Environmental and Life Sciences , grant number N010/0010/22 . The APC is financed by Wroc{\l}aw University of Environmental and Life Sciences. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2024 The Authors",

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AU - Sobol, Łukasz

AU - Dyjakon, Arkadiusz

AU - Korendał, Marek

AU - Styczyńska, Marzena

AU - Sabat, Dominika

AU - Szumny, Antoni

AU - Dlugogorski, Bogdan Z.

N1 - Funding Information: The publication is financed under the individual student research project “Młode umysły—Young Minds Project” from the subsidy increased for the period 2020–2025 in the amount of 2% of the subsidy referred to Art. 387 (3) of the Law of 20 July 2018 on Higher Education and Science, obtained in 2019. This research was funded/co-founded by Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences , grant number N010/0010/22 . The APC is financed by Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences. Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Authors

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AB - Torrefaction constitutes one of the promising technologies for the management of waste biomass and the production of high-carbon products for combustion, gasification, adsorption of pollutants or soil treatment. Unfortunately, waste biomass may be contaminated with toxic persistent organic pollutants, such as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/PCDF) and dioxin-like biphenyls (dl-PCB). Literature does not provide consistent measurements on how the low-temperature thermochemical processing, such as torrefaction, affects the toxicity of biomass. This contribution assesses how a torrefaction treatment, conducted at 200 °C, modifies the toxicity due to PCDD/PCDF/dl-PCB in biomass. We deploy the XDS-CALUX biotest on five types of waste biomass (sewage sludge, tree bark, cattle manure, spent coffee ground, common reed), before and after treatment. The content of total dioxin- & biphenyl fraction compounds in the raw biomass, investigated in this study, varies from 0.14 to 3.67 pg BEQ·g−1d.m., and in the torrefied biomass between 0.17 and 6.00 pg BEQ·g−1d.m.; BEQ stands for bioanalytical equivalent. This increase is statistically insignificant at p = 0.05, taking into account all types of examined biomass. This proves that low-temperature torrefaction cannot detoxify biomass, i.e., chars, produced from biomass characterized by elevated concentration of PCDD/PCDF/dl-PCB, will reflect the contamination of the feedstocks. With respect to heavy metals, we conclude that only the content of Cd in biomass, and, to a lesser extent, the abundance of Cu and Fe, modify the toxicity of this material during its thermochemical treatment at low temperature.

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Alteration of biomass toxicity in torrefaction: A XDS-CALUX bioassay study

Abstract

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