Methane production from food waste via mesophilic anaerobic digestion with ethanol pre-fermentation: Methanogenic pathway and microbial community analyses

Hui Zou; Ming Gao; Miao Yu; Wenyu Zhang; Shuang Zhang; Chuanfu Wu; Yukihiro Tashiro; Qunhui Wang

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2019.122450

Methane production from food waste via mesophilic anaerobic digestion with ethanol pre-fermentation: Methanogenic pathway and microbial community analyses

Bioresour Technol. 2020 Feb:297:122450. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.122450. Epub 2019 Nov 21.

Authors

Hui Zou¹, Ming Gao², Miao Yu³, Wenyu Zhang⁴, Shuang Zhang⁵, Chuanfu Wu², Yukihiro Tashiro⁶, Qunhui Wang⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environmental Engineering, School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China; Institute of Soil Environment and Pollution Remediation, Beijing Municipal Research Institute of Environmental Protection, Beijing 100037, PR China.
² Department of Environmental Engineering, School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China; Beijing Key Laboratory on Disposal and Resource Recovery of Industry Typical Pollutants, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China.
³ China Enfi Engineering Corporation, Beijing 100038, PR China.
⁴ Institute of Soil Environment and Pollution Remediation, Beijing Municipal Research Institute of Environmental Protection, Beijing 100037, PR China.
⁵ Department of Environmental Engineering, School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China.
⁶ Department of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Faculty of Agriculture, Graduate School, Kyushu University, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan.
⁷ Department of Environmental Engineering, School of Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China; Beijing Key Laboratory on Disposal and Resource Recovery of Industry Typical Pollutants, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China. Electronic address: wangqh59@sina.com.

PMID: 31796377
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.122450

Abstract

To investigate the methanogenic pathway and microbial community in a mesophilic anaerobic digestion (AD) system with food waste (FW) ethanol pre-fermentation (EP), two semi-continuous AD systems were operated by feeding FW with (PSR) and without EP (control). In this study, δ¹³C-ethanol was supplemented as solo substrate for AD sludge when the reactors operation stabilized to analyze the methanogenic pathways. The results suggested that approximately 59.3% of methane was produced from acetotrophic methanogens, while 40.7% was formed by hydrogenotrophic methanogens in the PSR group. On the other hand, compared with control, methane produced via CO₂ reduction pathway was increased by 4.70%. Meanwhile, the composition variations of the microbial community in AD supported the above conclusion, since the relative abundances of Clostridium and Methanobacterium were enhanced by 7.6% and 10.2%, respectively in PSR reactor. These results provided a theoretical basis for AD applications and biogas yield improvements with EP process.

Keywords: Food waste; High-throughput sequencing; Methanogenic pathway; Microbial community; Stable isotope.

MeSH terms

Anaerobiosis
Bioreactors
Ethanol
Fermentation
Food
Methane
Microbiota*
Refuse Disposal*
Sewage

Substances

Sewage
Ethanol
Methane