Shifts of acidogenic bacterial group and biogas production by adding two industrial residues in anaerobic co-digestion with cattle manure

Abstract

Anaerobic biodigestion figures as a sustainable alternative to avoid discharge of cattle manure in the environment, which results in biogas and biofertilizer. The anaerobic bioconversion of biomass to methane via anaerobic biodigestion requires a multi-step biological process, including microorganisms with distinct roles. Here, the dynamics of acidogenic bacterial populations by classical microbiology, as well as biogas productivity by gasometer and chromatography, in the anaerobic co-digestion process were studied. This paper presents a performance evaluation of co-digestion systems for biogas production using cattle manure and wastes from the Sewage Treatment Station of a brewery and ricotta cheese whey. The search revealed that the type of substrate added in co-digestion with cattle manure, Carbon/Nitrogen ratio, and Ammonia Nitrogen were the most influential factors that explained many of the variations of the microbiota in the biodigesters fed. This study demonstrated a good potential for the use of ricotta cheese whey in the production of biogas and its further conversion into energy. These findings could provide some fundamental and technical information for the co-treatment of industrial derived wastes in centralized anaerobic biodigestion facilities in a sustainable manner with high process capacity and methane recovery.

Keywords:

• Anaerobic co-digestion
• methane yields
• biogas production
• dairy cattle manure
• wastes
• microorganisms

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA Dairy Cattle) - process no.: 03.16.04.023.00.00 (SEG-EMBRAPA), funding agencies: National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq), Foundation for Research Support of the State of Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG), and the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Level or Education Personnel (CAPES), for financial support.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Authors' contributions

GHS, MHO and JCC conceived and designed research. GHS and MHO conducted experiments. GHS and LARS contributed to waste collection and mixture. GHS conducted chemical-physical and microbiological analyses and biochemical tests. GHS and NOB carried out the statistical test. GHS and NOB analyzed data. GHS wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, MHO upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Embrapa (03.16.04.023.00.00) and scholarship by and the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Level or Education Personnel (CAPES).