Evaluating digestion efficiency in full-scale anaerobic digesters by identifying active microbial populations through the lens of microbial activity

• DOI: 10.1038/srep34090
• Publication Date: 2016-09-26T10:59:34Z
• Authors: Ran Mei; Takashi Narihiro; Masaru K. Nobu; Kyohei Kuroda; Wen-Tso Liu
• Keywords: Digestion

Anaerobic digestion is a common technology to biologically stabilize wasted solids produced in municipal wastewater treatment. Its efficiency usually evaluated by calculating the reduction volatile solids, which assumes no biomass growth associated with digestion. To determine whether this assumption valid and further evaluate efficiency, study sampled 35 digester sludge from different reactors at multiple time points together feed full-scale water reclamation plant Chicago, Illinois. The microbial communities were characterized using Illumina sequencing based on 16S rRNA gene (rDNA). 74 core populations identified represented 58.7% of entire community. Among them, active first ratio rDNA (rRNA/rDNA) for individual populations, but approach failed generate consistent results. Subsequently, recently proposed mass balance model was applied calculate specific rate (μ), successfully (positive μ) that could play important roles than those negative μ. It estimated 82% digested comparison less 50% calculated current equations.