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Biogas Production from Distilled Grain Waste by Thermophilic Dry Anaerobic Digestion: Pretreatment of Feedstock and Dynamics of Microbial Community

Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology volume 184, pages 685–702 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Distilled grain waste (DGW) eluted from the Chinese liquor making process poses potential serious environmental problems. The objective of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of converting DGW to biogas by thermophilic dry anaerobic digestion. To improve biogas production, the effects of dilute H2SO4 and thermal pretreatment on DGW were evaluated by biochemical methane potential (BMP) tests. The results indicate that 90 °C thermal pretreatment provided the highest methane production at 212.7 mL/g-VTSadd. The long-term thermophilic dry anaerobic digestion process was conducted in a 5-L separable flask for more than 3 years at a volatile total solid (VTS) loading rate of 1 g/kg-sludge/d, using synthetic waste, untreated and 90 °C thermal pretreated DGW as the feedstock, respectively. A higher methane production, 451.6 mL/g-VTSadd, was obtained when synthetic waste was used; the methane production decreased to 139.4 mL/g-VTSadd when the untreated DGW was used. The 90 °C thermal pretreated DGW increased the methane production to 190.5 mL/g-VTSadd, showing an increase of 36.7% in methane production compared with that using untreated DGW. The microbial community structure analysis indicates that the microbial community in the thermophilic dry anaerobic digestion system maintained a similar structure when untreated or pretreated DGW was used, whereas the structure differed significantly when synthetic waste was used as the feedstock.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Science and Technology Program of Sichuan Province (2017JY0110) and the Scientific Research Foundation of Bureau of Science and Technology of Luzhou City (2015CDLZ-S06).

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  1. Li Tan

    Present address: College of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University, No. 24 South Section 1 First Ring Road, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610065, China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University, No. 24 South Section 1 First Ring Road, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610065, China

    Ting-Ting Wang, Zhao-Yong Sun, Yu-Lian Huang, Yue-Qin Tang & Kenji Kida

  2. Key Laboratory of Environmental and Applied Microbiology, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Li Tan

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  1. Ting-Ting Wang
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Correspondence to Zhao-Yong Sun.

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Wang, TT., Sun, ZY., Huang, YL. et al. Biogas Production from Distilled Grain Waste by Thermophilic Dry Anaerobic Digestion: Pretreatment of Feedstock and Dynamics of Microbial Community. Appl Biochem Biotechnol 184, 685–702 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12010-017-2557-6

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Keywords

  • Distilled grain waste
  • Thermophilic dry anaerobic digestion
  • Biogas
  • Biochemical methane potentialS
  • Thermal pretreatment
  • Microbial community