Application of Fourier transform mid-infrared photoacoustic spectroscopy for rapid assessment of phosphorus availability in digestates and digestate-amended soils

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Jing Huang
  • Nadia Glæsner
  • Jin M. Triolo
  • Georgios Bekiaris
  • Bruun, Sander
  • Fei Liu

Digestate is the anaerobic digestion by-product of biogas production that can be used as a phosphorus (P) fertilizer. To achieve the efficient utilization of digestate as a P fertilizer and evaluate P availability in digestate-amended soils, it is necessary to assess both available P in different digestates and digestate-amended soils. In this study, Fourier transform mid-infrared photoacoustic spectroscopy (FTIR-PAS) combined with multivariate analysis was applied to predict water-extractable P (WEP) in digestates and plant-available P in digestate-amended soils. The plant-available P was determined by the diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT) technique. 45 digestate samples were collected both from laboratory-scale digesters (26 samples) and operating biogas plants (19 samples) in Denmark for WEP determination. Three soils amended with the collected 19 digestate samples from biogas plants (that results to 57 digestate-amended soil samples in total) were deployed for DGT measurement of plant- available P. The WEP predicting model had a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.80 and a root mean square error of 0.78 g kg−1 while the plant-available P predicting model exhibited an R2 of 0.70 and a root mean square error of 134.09 μg P L−1. Furthermore, regression coefficients with a significant contribution of the plant-available P predicting model were identified, indicating that FTIR-PAS is capable for correlating spectra information with plant-available P related chemical bonds. In conclusion, FTIR-PAS can be used as a faster and non-destructive alternative for the assessment of both WEP in digestates and plant-available P in digestate-amended soils.

Original languageEnglish
Article number155040
JournalScience of the Total Environment
Volume832
ISSN0048-9697
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.

    Research areas

  • Diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT), Digestate, Fourier transform mid-infrared photoacoustic spectroscopy (FTIR-PAS), Partial least squares regression (PLSR) modelling, Water-extractable phosphorus (WEP)

ID: 333471712