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Experimental study on anaerobic co-digestion of the individual component of biomass with sewage sludge: methane production and microbial community

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Abstract

The co-digestion of the individual component of biomass with sewage sludge was investigated, concerning the cumulative methane yield, variation of pH, chemical oxygen demand (COD), volatile fatty acids (VFAs), and total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) during 50-day digestion. The microbial community at the initial stage (stage I) and maximum methane production rate stage (stage II) of the digestion process were identified by Illumina MiSeq sequencing. The cumulative methane yield from co-digestion of cellulose and sludge was increased by 33.33% over the calculated value from that of mono-digestion of cellulose and sludge, while that from co-digestion of hemicellulose and sludge was achieved as 259.32% compared with the calculated value from that of mono-digestion of hemicellulose and sludge. The Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes (F/B) ratio at the stage II of co-digestion of hemicellulose and sludge was notably decreased from 46.53 to that of 1.39 for mono-digestion of hemicellulose. The percentage of Methanosarcina in acetoclastic methanogens at the stage II of mono-digestion of hemicellulose was largely increased from 1.06% to that of 97.03% for co-digestion of hemicellulose and sludge.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51878145, 51676047 and 5181101221), Key Project of Environmental Protection Research Program of Department of Ecology and Environment of Jiangsu Province, China (Grant No. 2017006), and Nanjing Science and Technology Planning Project of Nanjing Science and Technology Committee of Jiangsu Province, China (Grant No. 201716003).

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  1. Chongbo Cheng contributed equally to this work should be considered as co-first author.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Energy Thermal Conversion and Control of Ministry of Education, School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, People’s Republic of China

    Pengfei Li, Chongbo Cheng, Ran Yu & Dekui Shen

  2. College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Henan Agricultural University, Nongye Road 63, Zhengzhou, 450002, Henan, People’s Republic of China

    Chao He & Youzhou Jiao

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  1. Pengfei Li
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Correspondence to Dekui Shen or Youzhou Jiao.

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Li, P., Cheng, C., He, C. et al. Experimental study on anaerobic co-digestion of the individual component of biomass with sewage sludge: methane production and microbial community. Biomass Conv. Bioref. 12, 5045–5058 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-020-01049-6

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