Abstract
Objective
To reveal the shifts of microbial communities along ammonium gradients, and the relationship between microbial community composition and the anaerobic digestion performance using a high throughput sequencing technique.
Results
Methane production declined with increasing ammonium concentration, and was inhibited above 4 g l−1. The volatile fatty acids, especially acetate, accumulated with elevated ammonium. Prokaryotic populations showed different responses to the ammonium concentration: Clostridium, Tepidimicrobium, Sporanaerobacter, Peptostreptococcus, Sarcina and Peptoniphilus showed good tolerance to ammonium ions. However, Syntrophomonas with poor tolerance to ammonium may be inhibited during anaerobic digestion. During methanogenesis, Methanosarcina was the dominant methanogen.
Conclusion
Excessive ammonium inhibited methane production probably by decoupling the linkage between acidification process and methanogenesis, and finally resulted in different performance in anaerobic digestion.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the support by National Key Technology Support Program (2014Banaerobic digestion02B04) and National Basic Research Program of China (2013CB733502).
Supplementary information
Supplementary Table 1—Microbial diversity indices at 97 % sequence similarity.
Supplementary Table 2—Variation partitioning analysis of environmental variables for the prokaryotic community structure.
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Zhang, M., Lin, Q., Rui, J. et al. Ammonium inhibition through the decoupling of acidification process and methanogenesis in anaerobic digester revealed by high throughput sequencing. Biotechnol Lett 39, 247–252 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-016-2241-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-016-2241-x