Economic performance assessment of malt dust derived biochar application for groundwater treatment: A circular economy approach

This paper mainly aimed to determine the energy cost reduction for groundwater treatment using the economic and innovative biochar adsorption process. From this point of view, malt dust which is a by-product of brewery industry was utilized as the agro-industrial raw material for the biochar production, in this study. Slow pyrolysis was performed under three different temperatures which are 250 (M1), 300 (M2) and 500 oC (M3) to produce the biochar. This unique biochar was used for the groundwater treatment as an innovative and effective water treatment technique. The groundwater was sampled from three observation points which were Uğraklı, Yaygılı and Bolatlar resources located at the Harran Plain before and post-irrigation. An economic performance assessment was carried out to benchmark the conventional and biochar adsorption processes. A new energy cost indicator (ECI) was developed based on nitrate (NO3-) removal. Averagely 91.69% of removal efficiency of NO3- was reported using three types of malt dust derived biochar. Approximately, 65.87% of reduction on energy costs was obtained using biochar adsorption process.