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Marine sediments from littoral and sublittoral location were evaluated as inocula for methane production from anaerobic fermentation of Macrocystis pyrifera in seawater system. Littoral sediment showed the higher methanogenetic activity from acetate and resulted in a higher biomethane yield of 217.1±2.4mL/g-VS, which was comparable with that reported in freshwater system with desalted seaweeds. With 0.8mM sodium molybdate added, both the maximal methane yield and concentration increased while the lag-time was greatly shortened, suggesting that sulfate was one of the major inhibitors. Microbial community analysis revealed that degradation of M. pyrifera needed cooperation of very complex microbial populations. Hydrogenotrophic methanogens had an absolute dominance in distribution compared with the acetotrophic ones, indicating syntrophic acetate oxidation coupled to hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis might play important roles in the thalassic anaerobic fermentation system. These results clearly showed that biomethane production of raw seaweeds in seawater system was feasible.

Macroalgae biomass has been considered as a promising feedstock for biogas production. In order to improve the efficiency of anaerobic digestion (AD) of macroalgae, semi-continuous fermentation was conducted to examine the effects of organic loading rate (OLR) on biogas production from Macrocystis pyrifer. Results showed that, under OLRs of 1.37, 2.74, 4.12 and 6.85 kg VSsubstrate/(m(3).d), the average unit biogas yields were 438.9, 477.3, 480.1 and 188.7 mL/(g VSsubstrate d), respectively. It indicated that biogas production was promoted by the increased OLR in an appropriate range while inhibited by the OLR beyond the appropriate range. The investigation on physical-chemical parameters revealed that unfavorable VFAs concentration, pH and salinity might be the main causes for system failure due to the overrange OLR, while the total phenols failed to reach the inhibitory concentration. Microbial community analysis demonstrated that several bacterial and archaeal phyla altered with increase in OLR apparently. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Potential for paddy soil enrichments obtained in the presence of nano-sized magnetite particles (named as PSEM) to promote methane production from effluents of hydrogen-producing stage in two-stage anaerobic digestion was investigated. The results showed that the addition of magnetite significantly accelerated methane production from acetate in a dose-independent manner. The results from high-throughput sequencing analysis revealed that Rhodocyclaceae-related species were selectively enriched, which were likely the key players for conversion of acetate to methane in PSEM. Compared to the paddy soil enrichments obtained in the absence of magnetite (named as PSEC), the maximum methane production rate in PSEM was significantly higher (1.5-5.5times higher for the artificial medium and 0.2-1.7times higher for the effluents). The accelerated methane production from the effluents indicated remarkably application potential of PSEM for improving performance of anaerobic digestion.