Upgrading of Food Waste in-vessel Composting Process: Effects of Biochar-rich Digestate Addition Nour El houda Chaher (
[email protected] ) University of Rostock: Universitat Rostock *Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, National Engineering School of Gabes, University of Gabes, 6029 Gabes, Tunisia. https://orcid.org/0000-0002- 2197-4491 Abdallah Nassour Department of Waste and Resource Management, Faculty of Agrar and Environmental Sciences, University of Rostock, 18051 Rostock, Germany Michael Nelles Department of Waste and Resource Management, Faculty of Agrar and Environmental Sciences, University of Rostock, 18051 Rostock, Germany. *DBFZ German Biomass Research Center GmbH, 04347 Leipzig, Germany Moktar Hamdi Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology, University of Carthage, 1080 Tunis, Tunisia Research Keywords: Biological treatment, Biochar, Compost, Digestate, Food Waste, Moisturizing Agent, European Standards, End-product Quality Posted Date: December 1st, 2020 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-113678/v1 License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Read Full License Page 1/36 Abstract Nowadays, Tunisia faces challenging environmental and energic issues which concern mainly the implementation of an appropriate solid waste management system dealing with the high production of biowaste in one hand and the increased need for water and energy resources in the other hand. Therefore, the current study intended to develop a technical concept on closed cycle ‘biowaste to bioenergy’, treating mainly food waste (FW) through combined biological processes. In this approach, FW anaerobic digestion (AD) residue was destined to feed FW in vessel-composting as a valuable input material.