Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Novel Enhanced Efficiency Fertilizer from Food Waste Digestate
EPA Contract Number: 68HERC24C0031Title: Novel Enhanced Efficiency Fertilizer from Food Waste Digestate
Investigators: Varshovi, Amir A
Small Business: GreenTechnologies, LLC
EPA Contact: Richards, April
Phase: I
Project Period: December 1, 2023 through May 30, 2024
Project Amount: $99,995
RFA: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) - Phase I (2024) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)
Description:
This project transforms the byproduct of anaerobic digestion, digestate, into pelletized, enhanced-efficiency fertilizers by developing a scalable process that can be adapted to a wide-range of organic materials. This approach also innovatively addresses the challenge of digestate management, converting it into valuable products for the agricultural sector. The utilization of digestate for fertilizer production represents a novel way to enhance nutrient recovery and promote sustainable agricultural practices and reduce waste.
This Phase I includes technical objectives to characterize food waste digestate, determine target nutrient compositions, and develop the necessary processing steps for converting food waste digestate into nutrient balanced enhanced efficiency fertilizers. The proposal builds upon GreenTechnologies' existing expertise in producing enhanced efficiency fertilizers and adapts the company’s technologies to process digestate. This technology aims to outperform current digestate disposal methods, such as landfilling, incineration, and composting. These enhanced efficiency fertilizers can be transported easily, have controlled nutrient release, and can be tailored to meet the nutrient requirements of different crops. By converting digestate into enhanced efficiency fertilizers, the technology offers a more sustainable and economically viable alternative compared to conventional disposal methods.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
Food digestate can be efficiently dried and pelletized with suitable physical characteristics for use as a dry, pelletized fertilizer. GreenTechnologies’ patented approach to adding nutrients to organic fertilizer bases can be successfully adapted to food digestate. GreenTechnologies’ nutrient enhancement methods result in a homogeneous distribution of additives throughout the digestate organic matrix, an ideal condition for controlling release. Further, the untreated digestate demonstrates a slow release profile while the treated product shows a characteristic enhanced efficiency profile, mixing immediate release with slow-release nitrogen.
Conclusions:
Phase 1 R&D demonstrates the technical feasibility of the proposed approach for converting food waste digestate, the byproduct of anaerobic digestion of food waste, into enhanced efficiency fertilizer. The laboratory production steps refined in Phase 1 are ready to be scaled up to pilot production. Other findings of Phase 1 suggest opportunities for further innovation when developing slow-release strategies.
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.