Most Efficient Anaerobic Digestion?

December 3, 2012 7:25 AM

All other factors held constant, what types of microbes at what temperatures would yield the most efficient way of turning an organic waste stream into a a source of methane fuel for use as natural gas?

I haven't taken biology in many years, so I'm missing a lot of knowledge in the area I'm sure. But I'm learning more about anaerobic digesters and find them very interesting, but I'm having trouble finding more indepth analyses of the specifics of the microbial interactions and how it could be optimized.

posted by gzimmer to Science & Nature (1 answer total)

Best answer: Do you have access to an academic library? It's not too hard to find research papers on this topic but I don't think that many of them are open access. I'm going to paste some of the links, and if you can access them, great, and if not, memail me and I can (shhh) send you some PDFs. I think this is a really interesting topic as well, but a lot more work needs to be done at the metabolic pathway level to truly optimize these kinds of systems, especially for microbial consortia, where the complexity and possibility for unstable steady states increases exponentially.

Biomethane production by anaerobic digestion of organic waste
A. Molinoa, , , F. Nannaa, Y. Dingb, , B. Biksonb, G. Braccioa (2012)

Methanogenic pathway and community structure in a thermophilic anaerobic digestion process of organic solid waste
Daisuke Sasaki, Tomoyuki Hori, Shin Haruta , Yoshiyuki Ueno, Masaharu Ishii, Yasuo Igarashi (2011)

Microbial community dynamics in mesophilic anaerobic co-digestion of mixed waste
Savaporn Supaphola, Sasha N. Jenkinsb, Pichamon Intomoa, Ian S. Waiteb, Anthony G. O’Donnellb (2011)

Solid-state anaerobic digestion for methane production from organic waste
Yebo Li, , Stephen Y. Park, Jiying Zhu (2011)

Methane Production from Plant Wastes and Chicken Manure at Different Working Conditions of a One-stage Anaerobic Digester
O. Yaldiza, S. Sozerb, N. Caglayana, C. Ertekina & D. Kaya (2011)
posted by permiechickie at 8:26 AM on December 3, 2012