Flexible feeding in anaerobic digestion - Impact on process stability, performance and microbial community structures.

Biogas has the potential to contribute to some of the most urgent issues of the energy transition, including mobility, energy storage, and grid stability. Flexibilization has been discussed as a means to improve the economics of biogas production, ideally restricting the production of electricity to times of strong need. Here the possibility of demand-driven, flexible biogas production is investigated, which saves substrates and storage capacity, while still enabling control over the production of electricity. Effects of different flexible feeding regimes were tested in a continuously operated 200 L reactor. After a period of 300 days under steady conditions (6.4 kg feed m-3d-1), varying flexible feeding patterns were applied over the next 700 days. Biogas production, volatile organic acid concentrations, and microbial dynamics were documented. Reduction of feeding resulted in reducing the gas production by up to 80% within a day. By increasing the feed, gas production could rapidly be reinitiated at similar levels as before even after fasting periods of up to 22 days. CH4-contents of the produced biogas were nearly constant over the investigation period. As a response to the flexible feeding, a reorganization of the microbial community was observed, which came to an end after 800 days and then was no longer affected by further changes in the feeding patterns or the substrate composition. Dominating archaea were of the order Methanosarcinales. During the experiment, representatives from the class Methanosaetaceae replaced representatives from the class Methanosarcinaceae.

Arsenic metabolism in technical biogas plants: possible consequences for resident microbiota and downstream units.

The metal(loid) and in particular the Arsenic (As) burden of thirteen agricultural biogas plants and two sewage sludge digesters were investigated together with the corresponding microbial consortia. The latter were characterized by ARISA (automated ribosomal intergenetic spacer analysis) and next generation sequencing. The consortia were found to cluster according to digester type rather than substrate or metal(loid) composition. For selected plants, individual As species in the liquid and gaseous phases were quantified, showing that the microorganisms actively metabolize and thereby remove the As from their environment via the formation of (methylated) volatile species. The As metabolites showed some dependency on the microbial consortia, while there was no statistical correlation with the substrate mix. Finally, slurry from one agricultural biogas plant and one sewage sludge digester was transferred into laboratory scale reactors ("satellite reactors") and the response to a defined addition of As (30 and 60 µM sodium arsenite) was studied. The results corroborate the hypothesis of a rapid conversion of dissolved As species into volatile ones. Methanogenesis was reduced during that time, while there was no discernable toxic effect on the microbial population. However, the utilization of the produced biogas as replacement for natural gas, e.g. as fuel, may be problematic, as catalysts and machinery are known to suffer from prolonged exposure even to low As concentrations.

Organic fertilizer as a vehicle for the entry of microplastic into the environment.

The contamination of the environment with microplastic, defined as particles smaller than 5 mm, has emerged as a global challenge because it may pose risks to biota and public health. Current research focuses predominantly on aquatic systems, whereas comparatively little is known regarding the sources, pathways, and possible accumulation of plastic particles in terrestrial ecosystems. We investigated the potential of organic fertilizers from biowaste fermentation and composting as an entry path for microplastic particles into the environment. Particles were classified by size and identified by attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. All fertilizer samples from plants converting biowaste contained plastic particles, but amounts differed significantly with substrate pretreatment, plant, and waste (for example, household versus commerce) type. In contrast, digestates from agricultural energy crop digesters tested for comparison contained only isolated particles, if any. Among the most abundant synthetic polymers observed were those used for common consumer products. Our results indicate that depending on pretreatment, organic fertilizers from biowaste fermentation and composting, as applied in agriculture and gardening worldwide, are a neglected source of microplastic in the environment.

Process parameters and changes in the microbial community patterns during the first 240 days of an agricultural energy crop digester.

Commercial biogas production takes place by complex microbial communities enclosed in controlled "technical ecosystems". Once established, the communities tend to be resilient towards disturbances, although the relative abundance of their members may vary. The start-up phase, during which the community establishes itself, is therefore decisive for the later performance of the reactor. In this study, we followed the first 240 days of a standard agricultural energy crop digester consisting of a 400 m(3) plug flow fermenter and a 1000 m(3) agitated post digester, operated at 40-45 °C. The feed consisted of corn and later grass silage augmented by ground wheat. Changes in both the eubacterial and methanogenic archaeal communities were followed by automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (ARISA). In addition the copy number of the methyl-coenzyme reductase A (mcrA)-genes found in all known methanogens were followed by quantitative PCR, while selected samples from two phases-one early, one late-of the community structure development were subjected to high throughput sequencing. Biogas volume and composition (CH4, CO2, H2, H2S, O2), pH, ammonia-N, and volatile fatty acids (VFA), were measured as part of the routine process control. VFA/TIC values were calculated on this basis. Whereas the total gas production of the plant established itself at about 2500 m(3) biogas per day within the first months, the composition of the microbial communities showed distinct spatial and temporal differences over the investigated time period. Absolute values for DNA isolation procedures are difficult to certify, hence comparative results on community structures obtained using standardized ARISA with identical primers are of value. Moreover, ARISA patterns can be statistically analyzed to identify distinct subgroups and transitions between them as well as serial correlations. Thereby the microbial community and its structural development can be correlated with statistical relevance to changes in operational (feed) and process parameters (pH-value, biogas composition). In particular when augmented by deep sequencing data of judiciously chosen samples, this allows a hitherto unknown level of insight into the performance of technical biogas plants.