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Assessment of farm soil, biochar, compost and weathered pine mulch to mitigate methane emissions

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated the effective utility of volcanic pumice soil to mitigate both high and low levels of methane (CH4) emissions through the activity of both γ-proteobacterial (type I) and α-proteobacterial (type II) aerobic methanotrophs. However, the limited availability of volcanic pumice soil necessitates the assessment of other farm soils and potentially suitable, economical and widely available biofilter materials. The potential biofilter materials, viz. farm soil (isolated from a dairy farm effluent pond bank area), pine biochar, garden waste compost and weathered pine bark mulch, were inoculated with a small amount of volcanic pumice soil. Simultaneously, a similar set-up of potential biofilter materials without inoculum was studied to understand the effect of the inoculum on the ability of these materials to oxidise CH4 and their effect on methanotroph growth and activity. These materials were incubated at 25 °C with periodic feeding of CH4, and flasks were aerated with air (O2) to support methanotroph growth and activity by maintaining aerobic conditions. The efficiency of CH4 removal was monitored over 6 months. All materials supported the growth and activity of methanotrophs. However, the efficiency of CH4 removal by all the materials tested fluctuated between no or low removal (0–40 %) and high removal phases (>90 %), indicating biological disturbances rather than physico-chemical changes. Among all the treatments, CH4 removal was consistently high (>80 %) in the inoculated farm soil and inoculated biochar, and these were more resilient to changes in the methanotroph community. The CH4 removal from inoculated farm soil and inoculated biochar was further enhanced (up to 99 %) by the addition of a nutrient solution. Our results showed that (i) farm soil and biochar can be used as a biofilter material by inoculating with an active methanotroph community, (ii) an abundant population of α-proteobacterial methanotrophs is essential for effective and stable CH4 removal and (iii) addition of nutrients enhances the growth and activity of methanotrophs in the biofilter materials. Further studies are underway to assess the feasibility of these materials at small plot and field scales.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Landcare Research for the Des Ross Memorial Scholarship to support the first author and for research facilities for this study, Peter Berben and Thilak Palmada for technical help, Neha Jha for the internal review, Anne Austin for the editing, Massey Genome Services for the sequencing and Massey University for providing access to the Roche light cycler machine for qPCR analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Soil and Earth Sciences Group, Institute of Agriculture and Environment, Massey University, Palmerston North, 4442, New Zealand

    Rashad Syed & Surinder Saggar

  2. Ecosystems and Global Changes, Landcare Research, Palmerston North, 4442, New Zealand

    Surinder Saggar & Kevin Tate

  3. Institute of Fundamental Sciences, MacDiarmid Institute of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

    Bernd H. A. Rehm

Authors
  1. Rashad Syed
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  2. Surinder Saggar
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  3. Kevin Tate
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  4. Bernd H. A. Rehm
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Correspondence to Rashad Syed.

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This study was funded by Landcare Research, New Zealand (Des Ross Memorial Scholarship 2013–2016). Author(s) declares that they have no conflict of interest. This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Syed, R., Saggar, S., Tate, K. et al. Assessment of farm soil, biochar, compost and weathered pine mulch to mitigate methane emissions. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 100, 9365–9379 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-016-7794-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-016-7794-z

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