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Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 781 – 784

International Conference on Solid Waste Management, 5IconSWM 2015

Utilization of Biogas Digester Liquid for Higher Mushroom Yeilds

Roopa Ashwath*, H N Chanakya, Sreesha Malayil *
Centre for Sustainable Technologies ,Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

Abstract

Biomass based biogas plants play important role in the sustainable development of rural India. These biogas plants apart
from providing biogas (CH4+CO2) that can be used for cooking and other purposes also provide two other byproducts such as
Biogas Digester Liquid (BDL) and Biogas Digester Residue (BDR).These byproducts contain proportion of locked nitrogen in
the form of ammonia, and other nutrients such as phosphorus that can be further utilized to produce valve added products like
mushroom .In this study biogas digester liquid was used as a nutrient supplement in place of water for cultivation of mushroom
specie like P.florida .it was observed that the mushroom bags supplemented with biogas digester liquid gave higher yield
(P.florida gave 2.4kg/kg substrate) compared to bags sprayed with water (standard bags,1.5kg/kg substrate). The time required
for pin head formation, fruiting body was also reduced by spraying biogas digester liquid. Also the mushroom samples, leachate
and solid substrate were analyzed for TKN, TP and TOC. Higher degradation of the substrate was seen in P. florida by spraying
BDL than compared to control bags that were sprayed with water.
© 2016
© 2016Published
The Authors. Published
by Elsevier by Elsevier
B.V. This B.V.
is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of 5IconSWM 2015.
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of 5IconSWM 2015
Keywords: Biomass, Biogas Digester Liquid (BDL), P. florida, Higher yields, Carbon balance for mushroom growth, Nitrogen and phosphorus
balance;

1. Introduction

India being an agricultural country generates 1200Mt/year of agro-residues which can be utilized for energy
production (Chanakya and Malayil 2012 a & b). Anaerobic digestion of these agro-residues and their sub
components leads to conversion of cell-wall protein, hemicelluloses and part of cellulose to biogas by anaerobic
microbes. The undigested slurry contains certain amount of cellulose and lignin which cannot be utilized by the

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: roopa1502@gmail.com

1878-0296 © 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of 5IconSWM 2015
doi:10.1016/j.proenv.2016.07.093
782 Roopa Ashwath et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 781 – 784

most of the anaerobic microbes and requires specific enzymes which are seen in Basidiomycetes (Hasegawa et
al.2012 ,raposo et al.2011,gunasheelan 2004).

Anaerobic digestion of agro-residues in a plug flow type biogas plant designed at IISC gives three main types
of output 1)Biogas 2)Biogas Digester Residue (BDR) 3)Biogas Digester Liquid (BDL) (Chanakya and Malayil 2012
a ,b & c, Chanakya et al.2009). BDL and BDR are rich in nutrients like nitrogen in the form of ammonia,
phosphorus, carbon and other essential minerals. Such nutrient rich BDR and BDL has been tested for various
purposes like fertilizer (Abubaker 2012) and mosquito repellent with low efficiency whereas studies have shown
that application of these to soil directly lads to leaching and loss of nutrients. Basidiomycetes are the only organisms
which are found to efficiently utilize these nutrients (Ragunathan and Swaminathan).

Spent biomass from biogas plants are rich in nutrients and retains about 40% to 60% of the cellulose and lignin
(Ganguly and chanakya 1994) thus providing adequate nitrogen rich substrates for the cultivation of edible
mushrooms and generates cash outflow by the use of biogas plants in the rural areas. This paper focus on cultivation
of mushroom species P.florida supplemented with BDL and the samples was analyzed for their yield and efficiency
of nutrient uptake.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1 Materials

Ready to fruit mushroom bags were procured from IIHR, Bangalore. These prepacked bags contain1kg of the
paddy straw mixed with 5-10% of the spawn and spawn running is carried for 25 days. Biogas digester liquid is
collected from the biomass biogas plant (plug flow type reactor) installed at IISC .This BDL is filtered (50 micron
mesh) and sterilized by autoclaving and stored in the can for later use.

2.2 Physio-Chemical Analysis

Moisture content was determined by determined by drying the samples in oven at 100°C for 24 hrs. Total
organic carbon (TOC) for solid substance was determined by dry oxidation method using muffle furnace at 550°C.
TOC for leachate was determined by micro-dichromate oxidation method (maciolek 1962). Total kjeldahl nitrogen
(TKN) free ammonia for both solid and liquid samples was determined by kjeldhal method (APHA 1978). Total
phosphates (TP) were estimated by phosphomolydate method (APHA 1978).

3. Results and Discussion

3.1 Mushroom yeild

After 25 days of spawning period a measured amount ( 100 ml) of BDL was sprayed on daily basis to ready to
fruit P. florida bags. The leachate collected everyday was stored at -4°C for further analysis. In this experiment 3
bags were used as standard bags that were sprayed with water, other 3 bags were sprayed with BDL. Time period for
initiation of the pin head formation, fruiting body formation and first flush were recorded. In case of P.florida it was
observed that spraying of BDL could reduce the time taken for various stages of mushroom growth such as pin head
formation, fruiting body formation and first flush. The total yield obtained after 40 days for control bags was
1.5kgmushroom/kgsubstrate were as in experimental bags the yield was 2.4kg mushroom/kg substrate (Figure 1).
The time taken for formation of pin head in control was 47d where as for BDL sprayed bags it reduced to 42d
(Figure 1). Fruiting body formation was observed by 49d in control whereas it reduced to 43d in BDL sprayed bags.
The first flush was harvested on 54d in control and by 46d in BDL sprayed bags. The overall cropping cycle in the
current experiment was 65d.
 Roopa Ashwath et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 781 – 784 783

60 Pin head
Fruiting body
50
First flush
40
Days 30

20
First flush
10 Fruiting body
0
Pin head
FL Std
BDL

Fig. 1. Time taken for various growth stages of P. florida

3.2 Nutrient balance in the process

The overall TOC, TKN and TP balance for both control and BDL sprayed bags is shown in Figure 2. The
leachate collected every day, spent mushroom compost(SMC) and mushroom sample were analyzed for TOC, TKN
and TP and a mass balance was attempted or the process to determine efficiency. The input source of C,N,P to the
system is from paddy straw and BDL wherein some amount of C,N,P is taken up by the mycelium for its growth and
some amount is collected in the leachate, and the rest in the spent mushroom compost. The amount of C and N
respired is calculated from the mass balance. Around 2.8% of the carbon in the straw is converted to mushroom, 2%
is found in leachate, 10.5% in spent mushroom compost. In BDL sprayed bags around 3.9% of the carbon is
converted to mushroom, 2% in leachate, 13.9% in SMC and the remaining input carbon is lost in the form of CO2
(STD 84.6%,BDL 80.4%). The process of spraying BDL on pre packed mushroom bags could not only could
increase yields and biological efficiency but also reduce time for fruiting body formation and in turn decrease
carbon dioxide emissions by 4.2%.

In case of nitrogen around 3.6% of nitrogen in the control bags are converted to mushroom, 70% was recovered
in the leachate, 8.1% in SMC at the end of 30th day where in case of BDL sprayed bags around 4.5% of nitrogen is
converted to mushroom, 72% of nitrogen was found in the leachate and about 6.4% found in SMC at the end of 30th
day. Most of the nitrogen in the leachate is in the form of free ammonia (17% in BDL and 18% in control ) which
could be lost in the form of nitrogen gas by nitrification and denitrification process.

Around 2.4% of TP in the paddy straw bags were converted to mushroom, 0.48% in the SMC and remaining in the
leachate.

3.3 Parameters affecting the process

Mushroom samples of both control and BDL sprayed were analyzed for carbon, nitrogen phosphorus, C/N ratio,
moisture, protein, carbohydrate, fat, fiber, cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin content. Nitrogen content in
mushroom samples in control is 4.95% of dry wt .and in BDL sprayed bags is 5.16% of dry weight. C/N ratio in
control was found to be 7.85 and BDL sprayed bags 7.46. The moisture content, protein, carbohydrate and fat
content in control was found to be 92.95±2.00, 21.68±1.03, 33.35±0.91, 4.15±0.34% respectively which is slightly
lesser than the BDL sprayed bags and was found to be 94.35±2.12 , 22.60±1.07, 32.11±0.67, 4.46±0.72 %
respectively. In control samples hemicellulose, cellulose and ash content was found to be 22.13±0.45, 16.56±0.22,
1.75±0.21 % and in case of BDL sprayed bags 21.87±0.55, 19.16±0.36, 1.65±0.12% where as Banik and
Nandi(2000) have reported a maximum biological efficiency of 15% by supplementing paddy straw with biogas
slurry (biogas plant fed with cow dung and MSW)
784 Roopa Ashwath et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 35 (2016) 781 – 784

Water (control) Pre packed ready to fruit Biogas digester

100ml*30d=3L mushroom bags(1kg liquid(bdl)
C=0,N=0,P=0 paddy straw) 100ml*30d=3L
C=156.73,N=15.27,P=1.15 C=2.4,N=3,P=1.2

Spent mushroom
Leachate
Pleurotus florida compost
Loss in the form C=3.34,N=13.18,
C=6.19,N=0.83, C=22.11,N=1.17,
of expiration P=0.38
P=0.00017 P=0.0024
C=128.43,N=3.09 C=3.19,N=10.73,
C=4.38,N=0.55, C=16.53,N=1.24,
C=132.63,N=2.75 P=0.28
P=0.00012 P-0.0055

All values are expressed as grams of mentioned weight

(C,N,P-BDL sprayed bags) (C,N,P-control bags)

Fig. 2. Nutreint flow(C,N,P) through the process

4. Conclusion

Supplementing pre-packed mushroom bags with BDL was found to be a sustainable method of increasing yields
in case of P. florida. Addition of 100ml of BDL on daily basis to the pre-packed mushroom bags could enhance the
productivity by 66% over control.

5. Reference

1) Abubaker, J., Risberg, K., Pell, M., 2012. Biogas residues as fertilizers e effects on
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