BMP testingMunicipal and green waste, paper and textiles

Newspaper — BMP: 7 studies, weighted mean 81 m³ CH₄/t VS

Newsprint has a lot of lignin from mechanical pulp, so it digests poorly; only pretreatment improves degradation, and printing inks have little effect.

rating: neutral CH₄ ≈ 52 % (estimate)

Published 1 September 2020Updated 29 October 20263 min readFeedstockData Editorial Team

Photo African Studies Centre Leiden / Wikimedia Commons, licence CC BY-SA 4.0, source file; changes: cropping

Weighted mean: 81m³ CH₄/t VS
Range: 45–100m³ CH₄/t VS
Records: 7studies
Publications: 3sources
Temperatures: 35 °C, 55 °Cof the test

Methane in biogas

≈51–54% CH₄

Medium methane content · ≈ 5.2 kWh/m³ of biogas

estimate from the substrate type The collected studies contain no measurement. The interval follows from the approximate composition (carbohydrate-dominated (no protein or fat characteristics)) and the yields of compound groups according to FNR.

How we calculate it and what the zones mean

Rating for biogas plants

neutral — editorial rating for biogas plantsNo clear advantages — worth charging a fee for accepting it

Potential per tonne of fresh matter: low, but limited by the poor degradability of the organic matter (74 m³ CH₄/t); no particular threats to stability. Handling costs: fibres, floating layer, slow degradation.

Why? Rating factors

Potential per tonne 0

±0potential 74 m³ CH₄/t fresh matter (BMP 81 × DM 93.2 % × VS 97.8 %); low degradability of VS (BMP 81 m³ CH₄/t VS) — points capped

Process stability 0

0no factors

Handling and costs −1

−0.5fibres, floating layer — shredding and intensive mixing
−0.5slow degradation — long retention time

Total points: −1 · thresholds: ≥ 2.5 very good, ≥ 1 good, below — neutral; negative with cumulative process risk.

Editorial rating per the methodology · confidence of the rating: medium · excluding market prices

Add to the co-digestion calculator CSV data

BMP curves from 7 studies

Weighted mean Individual records

Dashed lines are a model curve (first-order kinetics, B(t) = B₀·(1 − e^−kt)); the end point comes from the publication. All curves are model curves.

Cumulative methane production over the test [m³ CH₄/t VS]. The thick line is the weighted mean of all records (81); dots mark the end values given in the publications. Point at the chart to read values; click a legend item to hide or show a record.

Records and sources

Download CSV

Source	BMP m³ CH₄/t VS	Temperature	Sample	Curve
Tong et al. (1990) DOI	92	35 °C · mesophilic	News paper · pretreatment: air dried	end point (model curve)
Nallathambi Gunaseelan (1997) · 1 DOI	84	35 °C · mesophilic	unprinted (orig.: “unprinted newsPaper”): value quoted in a literature review	end point (model curve)
Nallathambi Gunaseelan (1997) · 2 DOI	100	35 °C · mesophilic	printed (orig.: “printed newsPaper”): value quoted in a literature review	end point (model curve)
Krause et al. (2018) · 1 DOI	45	35 °C · mesophilic	newspaper	end point (model curve)
Krause et al. (2018) · 2 DOI	60	55 °C · thermophilic	newspaper	end point (model curve)
Krause et al. (2018) · 3 DOI	62	35 °C · mesophilic	newspaper	end point (model curve)
Krause et al. (2018) · 4 DOI	70	55 °C · thermophilic	newspaper	end point (model curve)
Weighted mean	81	arithmetic mean 73, SD 20

Typical composition

Dry matter (DM): 93.2% (range 92.4–94)
Volatile solids (VS): 97.8 % DM (range 95.3–98)

Median and range of the determinations reported in the publications behind this substrate's BMP records (read from: CROPGEN D4, MY-D); dry matter: 2 determinations, volatile solids: 4 determinations. Samples were tested dried/air-dry – the DM refers to the material in the test, not to fresh material.

Sources: Tong et al. (1990); Nallathambi Gunaseelan (1997); Krause et al. (2018).

The composition of the raw material varies between batches — for plant calculations use an analysis of your own sample. The calculator inserts typical values automatically.

Process properties

fibrous
carbon-rich
low in nitrogen
slowly degrading
poor in trace elements
editorial classification

Low confidence: the description is based on general characteristics of the substrate group, not on studies of this material. Treat it as a hint to be verified.

Advantages

Methane potential in the Substraty.pl BMP dataset: weighted mean 81.1 m³ CH₄/t VS (SD 19.6; 7 records, 3 sources).
Newsprint: a source of cellulose, no risk of ammonia or acidification (Hendriks and Zeeman 2009).

Drawbacks and risks

Lignin from mechanical pulp shields the cellulose.

Co-digestion — what to combine it with, what to watch out for

combines well
substrates: high alkalinity (buffer) — e.g. Cattle manure, Pig slurry, Cattle slurry, Duck slurry, Rumen and digestive tract content
Slurry supplies N, alkalinity and trace elements.^[1][2]

Dosing

No source threshold.

Introduce gradually, starting with a small dose and monitoring the process (e.g. FOS/TAC, pH, gas composition).

Practical requirements

Shred: shredding increases the surface available for degradation and speeds it up, but does not necessarily raise the final gas yield (FNR 2010, Ch. 3 “Triturado”).

Sources of the process data

The co-digestion calculator will assess a specific mixture containing this substrate.

What it is and where it comes from

Newsprint is used for printing newspapers. It is made mainly from mechanical and groundwood pulps, often with an addition of waste paper. The fibres it contains are not chemically bleached, so they retain a considerable part of the lignin. After newspapers have circulated, waste paper arises and goes to recycling. The dataset contains newsprint samples, including unprinted and printed, tested under mesophilic and thermophilic conditions.

Properties relevant to digestion

Lignin is the main limitation here: it shields cellulose and hemicelluloses from enzymes and does not undergo anaerobic degradation. The methane potential of newsprint is therefore markedly lower than that of office paper or board made of chemical fibres. The nitrogen and phosphorus content is very low, which further limits microbial activity in mono-digestion. Printing inks currently used in newspapers are mostly based on vegetable or mineral oils and are present in small amounts. Shredded paper forms a sticky mass.

How to read the spread of results

The spread is moderate, but should not come as a surprise. Newsprint differs in the share of secondary and mechanical fibres, thickness, moisture and degree of printing. The dataset contains unprinted and printed samples (cited in a review), which illustrates the effect of printing, mostly small. Beyond that, size reduction, temperature (mesophilic or thermophilic), the inoculum and nutrient additions, and the test length matter. In most records degradation did not reach a plateau.

In biogas plant practice

Newsprint is a poor substrate and there is no justification for planning a share of it in the mix; in practice it is sent for recycling. If it enters a plant as a contaminant of biowaste, it behaves like lignocellulosic material: it degrades slowly and may remain in the digestate. Size reduction and the addition of nutrients improve the result, but do not fundamentally change its low potential. As waste paper, paper is waste (group 15 or 20).

Compared with other grades of paper, newsprint is the most resistant, and the only way of improving it is pretreatment, e.g. steam or alkaline, which loosens the lignin bonds. On the scale of agricultural biogas plants, however, such solutions are rarely used because of cost.

Methodology in brief

BMP is the amount of methane obtained from volatile solids (VS) in a batch test, given in m³ CH₄ per tonne of VS (numerically the same as NmL CH₄/g VS in the publications) and converted to normal conditions (0 °C, 101.325 kPa). The weighted mean gives each publication a total weight of 1, split equally between its results for the substrate — a paper testing twenty varieties does not outweigh a paper with a single sample. In inter-laboratory programmes the unit is the laboratory (total weight 1), and within it the weight of a test grows with the number of bottles (replicates). Results after pretreatment (e.g. thermal, chemical, enzymatic) are shown separately and are not included in the mean.

Solid lines are curves measured in the tests. Where a publication gives only the final result, we draw a first-order kinetic model, B(t) = B₀·(1 − e^−kt): only the end point comes from the publication, and the shape of the curve serves purely as visualisation — do not read the production on a particular day from it. For this substrate k = 0.110 d⁻¹ was assumed (median of rate constants k reported in the sources and/or fitted to the mean measured curves).

The statistics describe the spread of published results — a descriptive compilation, not a meta-analysis or a guarantee of plant yield.

Full methodology and correction policy

Bibliography

All sources of the site: bibliography.