Seminario

Integrating process engineering and microbiology tools to better understand anaerobic (waste-) water treatment processes

Riassunto

Anaerobic digestion can make an important contribution to the change of the (waste-) water treatment concept from a pollution control point of view to a recovery of valuable resources perspective. However, anaerobic digestion is still limited by some obstacles and frequent process instabilities, and therefore, a considerable monitoring and optimization is still required. Culture-independent molecular techniques, such as denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), have demonstrated that the microbial community structure can play an important role for a good reactor performance and many studies have postulated that biomonitoring of the microbial community characteristics could lead to an early detection of operational problems, and eventually, making prevention possible. The objective of this seminar is to present the conducted and on-going work of the Group of Environmental Engineering and Bioprocesses on this topic. Firstly, the relationship between the microbial activities (hydrolytic, acidogenic and methanogenic) and the microbial community structure in six full-scale anaerobic digesters and one lab-scale co-digester will be shown. Secondly, the microbial ecology of anaerobic processes during transitional states, such as start-up or variations in the feeding composition will be examined in five mesophilic anaerobic reactors inoculated with the same biomass and fed with five different substrates (pig manure, biodiesel residues, ethanol stillage, molasses residues and fish canning waste). Finally, the Microbial Resource Management (MRM) approach will be used to correlate the process parameters and the microbial community characteristics in anaerobic lab-scale reactors.

Documenti
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