Humic Substances as a Feed Supplement and the Benefits of Produced Chicken Meat

Design of a sustainable biorefinery for the valorization of waste from the baker's yeast industry through process simulation: A case study for the production of animal feed, fertilizers, and biofuels from vinasse

The present work deals with the biotechnological valorization of the vinasse through a sustainable biorefinery. The aim was to design and analyze, through process simulation, a biorefinery for the valorization of vinasse in products such as organo-mineral fertilizers, supplements for animal feed, and biogas. For this purpose, the SuperPro Designer software was used, and a modified hierarchical decomposition method was applied. One base case and three scenarios were techno-economically assessed, and the net present value was used as a selection criterion. The technological configuration with the best techno-economic criterion was analyzed socially and environmentally. The results suggest that the best configuration of the biorefinery corresponded to scenario 3, with a net present value of USD$73,364,000, a number of direct employees of 38, and a blue water footprint of 16.16 m3/h. These findings highlight the potential of the design of biorefineries to address the valorization of vinasses in Colombia and worldwide.

Hazardous or Advantageous: Uncovering the Roles of Heavy Metals and Humic Substances in Shilajit (Phyto-mineral) with Emphasis on Heavy Metals Toxicity and Their Detoxification Mechanisms

Shilajit is a phyto-mineral diffusion and semi-solid matter used as traditional medicine with extraordinary health benefits. This study provides a comprehensive data on Shilajit with emphasis on heavy metal profile, associated toxicities, and metal detoxification mechanisms by humic substances present in Shilajit. Data was searched across papers and traditional books using Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, Medline, SciELO, Web of Science, and Scopus as key scientific databases. Findings showed that Shilajit is distributed in almost 20 regions of the world with uses against 20 health problems as traditional medicine. With various humic substances, almost 11 biological activities were reported in Shilajit. This phyto-mineral diffusion possesses around 65 heavy metals including the toxic heavy metals like Cu, Al, Pb, As, Cd, and Hg. However, humic substances in Shilajit actively detoxify around 12 heavy metals. The recommended levels of heavy metals by WHO and FDA in herbal drugs is 0.20 and 0.30 ppm for Cd, 1 ppm for Hg, 10.00 ppm for As and Pb, 20 ppm for Cu, and 50 ppm for Zn. The levels of reported metals in Shilajit were found to be lower than the permissible limits set by WHO and FDA, except in few studies where exceeded levels were reported. Shilajit consumption without knowing permissible levels of metals is not safe and could pose serious health problems. Although the humic substances and few metals in Shilajit are beneficial in terms of chelating toxic heavy metals, the data on metal detoxification still needs to be clarified.

Formation and Detection of Gizzerosine in Animal Feed Matrices: Progress and Perspectives

Gizzerosine is responsible for gizzard erosion and black vomit, owing to excessive gastric acid secretion in poultry. It is a biogenic amine that forms during feed processing. Gizzerosine, a derivative of histamine, is a serious threat to animal feed safety and poultry production because it is more potent after ingestion and more harmful to poultry than histamine. The difficulty of obtaining gizzerosine and the lack of simple, rapid, and sensitive in vitro detection techniques have hindered studies on the effects of gizzerosine on gizzard health and poultry production. In this review, we evaluated the natural formation and the chemical synthesis methods of gizzerosine and introduced seven detection methods and their principles for analyzing gizzerosine. This review summarizes the issues of gizzerosine research and suggests methods for the future development of gizzerosine detection methods.

Artificial Humic Substances as Biomimetics of Natural Analogues: Production, Characteristics and Preferences Regarding Their Use

Various processes designed for the humification (HF) of animal husbandry wastes, primarily bird droppings, reduce their volumes, solve environmental problems, and make it possible to obtain products with artificially formed humic substances (HSs) as analogues of natural HSs, usually extracted from fossil sources (coal and peat). This review studies the main characteristics of various biological and physicochemical methods of the HF of animal wastes (composting, anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonation, acid or alkaline hydrolysis, and subcritical water extraction). A comparative analysis of the HF rates and HS yields in these processes, the characteristics of the resulting artificial HSs (humification index, polymerization index, degree of aromaticity, etc.) was carried out. The main factors (additives, process conditions, waste pretreatment, etc.) that can increase the efficiency of HF and affect the properties of HSs are highlighted. Based on the results of chemical composition analysis, the main trends and preferences with regard to the use of HF products as complex biomimetics are discussed.