Liquid co-substrates repower sewage microbiomes

AbstractA range of parameters are known to shape the methanogenic communities of biogas-producing digesters and to strongly influence the amount of biogas produced. In this work, liquid and solid fractions of grass biomass were used separately for semicontinuous batch methanation using sewage sludge as seed sludge. During 6 months of incubation, the amount of input COD was increased gradually, and the underlying methanogenic microbiome was assessed by means of microscopy-based automated cell counting and full-length 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing. In this sense, we prove for the first time the suitability of the ONT™MinION platform as a monitoring tool for anaerobic digestion systems. …