Butyrate production and purification by combining dry fermentation of food waste with a microbial fuel cell

This study developed and evaluated a high-purity butyrate producing bioprocess from food waste by combining dry fermentation (DF) with a microbial fuel cell (MFC). Acclimatization of a DF reactor with an enrichment culture resulted in high food waste degradation (VS removed, %) and butyrate production. A high VS degradation of 81%, butyrate concentration of up to 24 gCOD_butyrate/L and butyrate yields of 497 gCOD_butyrate/kg VS_added was obtained in the DF reactor. As a result, butyrate comprised 83% of all short chain fatty acids (SCFA) in the DF broth. Acetate (10%) and propionate (7%) comprised the rest of the SCFA. The butyrate composition was further purified by feeding the DF broth to a multi-electrode MFC enriched with anode respiring bacteria (ARB) such as Geobacter sp. (>55%). The ARB in the MFC removed acetate and propionate while purified butyrate was recovered in the MFC effluent. Butyrate purity in the MFC effluent reached as high as 99% at hydraulic retention time of 72 h. Along with butyrate purification, the MFC produced electric power in a range of 0.1-0.6 Wh/gCODbutyrate_recovered (or 0.01-7.85 kWh/ton of food waste), demonstrating that MFCs can be an energy-positive butyrate purification bioprocess.

Dry anaerobic digestion of cow manure and agricultural products in a full-scale plant: Efficiency and comparison with wet fermentation

For years, anaerobic digestion processes have been implemented for the management of organic wastes, agricultural residues, and animal manure. Wet anaerobic digestion still represents the most common technology, while dry fermentation, dedicated to the treatment of solid inputs (TS>20%) can be considered as an emerging technology, not in terms of technological maturity, but of diffusion. The first agricultural dry anaerobic digestion plant constructed in Italy was monitored from the start-up, for over a year. The plant was fed with manure and agricultural products, such as corn silage, triticale, ryegrass, alfalfa, and straw. Three Combined Heat and Power units, for a total installed power of 910kW_e, converted biogas into thermal and electric energy. The monitoring included the determination of quality and quantity of input feedstocks, of digestate (including recirculation rate), of leachate, biogas quality (CH₄, CO₂, H₂S), biogas yield, energy production, labor requirement for loading, and unloading operations. The results of the monitoring were compared to performance data obtained in several full scale wet digestion plants. The dry fermentation plant revealed a start-up phase that lasted several months, during which the average power resulted in 641kW_e (70.4% of nominal power), and the last period the power resulted in 788kW_e (86.6% of installed power). Improving the balance of the input, the dry fermentation process demonstrated biogas yields similar to wet anaerobic digestion, congruent to the energy potential of the biomasses used in the process. Furthermore, the operation of the plant required significant man labor, mainly related to loading and unloading of the anaerobic cells.

Dry fermentation of manure with straw in continuous plug flow reactor: Reactor development and process stability at different loading rates

In this work, a plug flow reactor was developed for continuous dry digestion processes and its efficiency was investigated using untreated manure bedded with straw at 22% total solids content. This newly developed reactor worked successfully for 230days at increasing organic loading rates of 2.8, 4.2 and 6gVS/L/d and retention times of 60, 40 and 28days, respectively. Organic loading rates up to 4.2gVS/L/d gave a better process stability, with methane yields up to 0.163LCH₄/gVS_added/d which is 56% of the theoretical yield. Further increase of organic loading rate to 6gVS/L/d caused process instability with lower volatile solid removal efficiency and cellulose degradation.

Continuous dry fermentation of swine manure for biogas production

A down plug-flow anaerobic reactor (DPAR) was designed for the feasibility study on continuous dry fermentation of swine manure without any additional stirring. Using fresh swine manure as the feedstock with TS concentration (w/w) of 20%, 25%, 30%, and 35%, stable volumetric biogas production rates of 2.40, 1.92, 0.911, and 0.644L · (Ld)(-1) and biogas yields of 0.665, 0.532, 0.252, and 0.178 L g(-)(1)VS were obtained respectively, and the TS degradation rates were 46.5%, 45.4%, 53.2%, and 55.6%, respectively. With the increase of feedstock TS concentration, the concentration of ammonia nitrogen grew up to the maximum value of 3500 mg L(-1). Biogas production was obviously inhibited when the concentration of ammonia nitrogen was above 3000 mg L(-1). The maximal volumetric biogas production rate of 2.34 L ·(Ld)(-1) and biogas yield of 0.649 L g(-1)VS were obtained with TS concentration of 25% at 25°C without inhibition. Liquidity experiments showed that TS concentration of digestate could be less than 15.8%, and the flow rate of digestate more than 0.98 m s(-1) when the feedstock TS concentration was less than 35%, which indicated the digestate could be easily discharged from a DPAR. Therefore, it is feasible to conduct a continuous dry fermentation in a DPAR using fresh swine manure as the feedstock with TS concentration less than 35%, whereas the feedstock TS concentration should not exceed 30% to achieve the maximal biogas production rate and biogas yield.

Comparative metagenomics of biogas-producing microbial communities from production-scale biogas plants operating under wet or dry fermentation conditions

BACKGROUND

Decomposition of biomass for biogas production can be practiced under wet and dry fermentation conditions. In contrast to the dry fermentation technology, wet fermentation is characterized by a high liquid content and a relatively low total solid content. In this study, the composition and functional potential of a biogas-producing microbial community in an agricultural biogas reactor operating under wet fermentation conditions was analyzed by a metagenomic approach applying 454-pyrosequencing. The obtained metagenomic dataset and corresponding 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequences were compared to the previously sequenced comparable metagenome from a dry fermentation process, meeting explicitly identical boundary conditions regarding sample and community DNA preparation, sequencing technology, processing of sequence reads and data analyses by bioinformatics tools.

RESULTS

High-throughput metagenome sequencing of community DNA from the wet fermentation process applying the pyrosequencing approach resulted in 1,532,780 reads, with an average read length of 397 bp, accounting for approximately 594 million bases of sequence information in total. Taxonomic comparison of the communities from wet and dry fermentation revealed similar microbial profiles with Bacteria being the predominant superkingdom, while the superkingdom Archaea was less abundant. In both biogas plants, the bacterial phyla Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Spirochaetes and Proteobacteria were identified with descending frequencies. Within the archaeal superkingdom, the phylum Euryarchaeota was most abundant with the dominant class Methanomicrobia. Functional profiles of the communities revealed that environmental gene tags representing methanogenesis enzymes were present in both biogas plants in comparable frequencies. 16S rRNA gene amplicon high-throughput sequencing disclosed differences in the sub-communities comprising methanogenic Archaea between both processes. Fragment recruitments of metagenomic reads to the reference genome of the archaeon Methanoculleus bourgensis MS2(T) revealed that dominant methanogens within the dry fermentation process were highly related to the reference.

CONCLUSIONS

Although process parameters, substrates and technology differ between the wet and dry biogas fermentations analyzed in this study, community profiles are very similar at least at higher taxonomic ranks, illustrating that core community taxa perform key functions in biomass decomposition and methane synthesis. Regarding methanogenesis, Archaea highly related to the type strain M. bourgensis MS2(T) dominate the dry fermentation process, suggesting the adaptation of members belonging to this species to specific fermentation process parameters.

Effects of microbial and non-microbial factors of liquid anaerobic digestion effluent as inoculum on solid-state anaerobic digestion of corn stover

The microbial activity of the inoculum (liquid anaerobic digestion effluent) was altered by autoclaving part of the effluent to study the effect of feedstock to active effluent ratio (F/Ea, 2.2-6.6) and the feedstock to total effluent ratio (F/Et, 2.2 and 4.4) on reactor performance in solid state anaerobic digestion (SS-AD) of corn stover. When the F/Ea ratio was increased from 2.2 to 6.6, methane yield was not significantly reduced; however, reactors became acidified when the F/Et ratio was increased from 2.2 to 4.4. It was concluded that F/Et had a greater effect on methane yields than F/Ea for the range studied in this paper. As analyzed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis using PCR amplified 16S rRNA genes, the microbial community underwent dynamic shifts under acidified conditions over 38days of SS-AD. These shifts reflected the acclimation, both adaptive selection and diversification, of the initial inoculated microbial consortia.