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The effectiveness and treatment conditions of FeCl- and AlCl-coagulated municipal sewage sludge from chemically enhanced primary treatment (CEPT) using anaerobic digestion (AD) and the structure of microbial community were investigated. The results based on 297 measurements under different operational conditions demonstrate good average AD performance of CEPT sludge, that is, percent volatile solid reduction of 58 %, specific biogas production (or biogas yield) of 0.92 m/kg volatile solids (VS) destroyed, and methane content of 65.4 %. FeCl dosing, organic loading rate, temperature, and hydraulic retention time all significantly affected AD performance. FeCl dosing greatly improved specific methane production (methane yield) by 38-54 % and significantly reduced hydrogen sulfide (HS) content in biogas (from up to 13,250 to <200 ppm), contributing to higher methane recovery and simplified biogas cleaning for power generation. Metagenomic analysis suggested that anaerobic digesters of both CEPT sludge and combined primary and secondary sludge were dominated by Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Thermotogae, and Chloroflexi. However, Methanomicrobia methanogens were better enriched in the anaerobic digesters of CEPT sludge than in the combined sludge. Further, different sources of CEPT sludge with various chemical properties nurtured shared and unique microbial community composition. Combined, this study supports AD as an efficient technology for CEPT sludge treatment and poses first insights into the microbial community structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ubiquitous occurrence of microorganisms gives rise to continuous public concerns regarding their pathogenicity and threats to human environment, as well as potential engineering benefits in biotechnology. The development and wide application of environmental biotechnology, for example in bioenergy production, wastewater treatment, bioremediation, and drinking water disinfection, have been bringing us with both environmental and economic benefits. Strikingly, extensive applications of microscopic and molecular techniques since 1990s have allowed engineers to peep into the microbiology in 'black box' of engineered microbial communities in biotechnological processes, providing guidelines for process design and optimization. Recently, revolutionary advances in DNA sequencing technologies and rapidly decreasing costs are altering conventional ways of microbiology and ecology research, as it launches an era of next-generation sequencing (NGS). The principal research burdens are now transforming from traditional labor-intensive wet-lab experiments to dealing with analysis of huge and informative NGS data, which is computationally expensive and bioinformatically challenging. This study discusses state-of-the-art bioinformatics and statistical analyses of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data from prevalent NGS platforms to promote its applications in exploring microbial diversity of functional and pathogenic microorganisms, as well as their interactions in biotechnological processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]