Highly digestible nitrogen-enriched straw upgraded by ozone-urea pretreatment: Digestibility metrics and energy-economic analysis

Marzieh Ghorbani, Qiao Li, Mohammad Hossein Kianmehr, Akbar Arabhosseini, Ehsan Sarlaki, Keyvan Asefpour Vakilian, Sunita Varjani, Yajing Wang, Dan Wei, Junting Pan*, Mortaza Aghbashlo, Meisam Tabatabaei

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Ozone is a powerful oxidative gas widely used as a green pretreatment to enhance the delignification of cereal straws. Urea pretreatment can enrich straws with nitrogen to make them more accessible to anaerobic microorganisms. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of ozone-urea pretreatment on the digestibility of wheat straw (i.e., physicochemical, nitrogen enrichment, gas production, nutritional value, and surface chemistry). The results of ozone-urea pretreatment were compared with non-pretreated, ozone-pretreated, and urea-pretreated samples. This pretreatment method outperformed the other methods in terms of digestibility metrics. The ozone-urea pretreatment resulted in a 50% reduction in lignin, a 4.2 times increase in crude protein, a 22.5% increase in bonded organic-N, a 2 times increase in 24 h-gas production, and a 43.67% increase in total digestible nutrients compared to the non-pretreated sample. Based on the total digestible nutrients index, one-tonne ozone-urea-pretreated straw would be 70.6 USD cheaper than the non-pretreated one.

© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Original languageEnglish
Article number127576
Number of pages10
JournalBioresource Technology
Volume360
Online published2 Jul 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2022
Externally publishedYes

Research Keywords

  • Anaerobic microorganisms
  • Digestibility
  • Nitrogen enrichment
  • Ozone-urea pretreatment
  • Total digestible nutrients
  • Wheat straw

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Highly digestible nitrogen-enriched straw upgraded by ozone-urea pretreatment: Digestibility metrics and energy-economic analysis'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this