David Wilkins, Subramanya Rao, Xiaoying Lu, Patrick K H Lee
Abstract
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a widespread microbial technology used to treat organic waste and recover energy in the form of methane ("biogas"). While most AD systems have been designed to treat a single input, mixtures of digester sludge and solid organic waste are emerging as a means to improve efficiency and methane yield. We examined laboratory anaerobic cultures of AD sludge from two sources amended with food waste, xylose, and xylan at mesophilic temperatures, and with cellulose at meso- and thermophilic temperatures, to determine whether and how the inoculum and substrate affect biogas yield and community composition. All substrate and inoculum combinations yielded methane, with food waste most productive by mass. Pyrosequencing of transcribed bacterial and archaeal 16S rRNA showed that community composition varied across substrates and inocula, with differing ratios of hydrogenotrophic/acetoclastic methanogenic archaea associated with syntrophic partners. While communities did not cluster by either inoculum or substrate, additional sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene in the source sludge revealed that the bacterial communities were influenced by their inoculum. These results suggest that complete and efficient AD systems could potentially be assembled from different microbial inocula and consist of taxonomically diverse communities that nevertheless perform similar functions.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 December 2015.
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#6,717,862
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Outputs from Frontiers in Microbiology
#6,746
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#82,298
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Microbiology
#119
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Altmetric has tracked 22,830,751 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 70th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 24,801 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 72% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 440 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 72% of its contemporaries.
