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Black phosphorus (BP) and BP modified by hydrogen peroxide (MBP) were used as accelerants to enhance CH 4 production and CO 2 reduction in microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) coupled with anaerobic co-digestion systems (MEC-AcoD). The MEC-AcoD group with a voltage of 0.6 V and 0.03 wt.% of MBP accelerant (MEC 0.6 MBP 0.03 ) had the largest CH 4 yield (242.1 mL/g VS) and the smallest carbon dioxide yield (97.6 mL/g VS) compared with the control group (141.2 mL/g VS, 146.9 mL/g VS). The digestates that used MEC 0.6 MBP 0.03 exhibited superior thermal stability (46.2 %) and total nutrient contents (44.5 g/kg). These improvements may be attributed to the superior electron exchange capacity and physicochemical properties of MBP. Herein, we propose a strategy to understand enhanced CH 4 production and CO 2 reduction in anaerobic co-digestion and MEC-AcoD systems using MBP accelerants. Notably, combining MBP and MEC could effectively promote anaerobic co-digestion performance., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The anaerobic-co-digestion (AcoD) of dairy-manure (DM) and aloe-peel-residue (ALR) waste is enhanced by combining static-magnetic-field (SMF) and fly-ash (FA). Varying SMF intensities (5-30 mT) were applied to the co-digestion digesters containing the optimum FA concentration (1.5 wt.%), which were selected from co-digestion systems with a varying FA (0-2 wt.%). All experimental groups exhibit the greater COD removal rates (51.56-64.19%) and cumulative biogas yields (604.14-671.64 mL/g VS) than reference group (37.77% and 433.19 mL/g VS). The digester with optimum FA concentration (1.5 wt.%) under 5 mT shows the highest biogas yield (671.64 mL/g VS), and exhibits superior digestate stability (45.4%) and fertility (7.01%) for fertilizer utilization. A powerful strategy for understanding the underlying mechanism of the SMF and FA accelerant in an enhanced AcoD system is proposed. This work documents an innovative technique for an enhanced AcoD system using the SMF coupled with FA accelerant., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This work tried understanding aggregation preference of anammox bacteria from benefit-driven perspective. Aggregated anammox sludge (AGS) gained benefits in specific anammox activity (SAA) (increased by 40.47 ± 12.64%) and in toxicity resistance (enhanced by 65.41%) than scattered anammox sludge (SCS), which were verified by kinetics. The increased heme c content by 35.67 ± 5.77% and enhanced relative abundance of anammox bacteria by 9.29% supported the benefits in biological activity and improved EPS content by 1097.59 ± 43.06% (622.16 ± 61.73% for protein (PN), 2403.47 ± 162.75% for humic acid (HA) and 1145.34 ± 97.33% for polysaccharide (PS)) justified the benefits in toxicity resistance. The diverse microbial communities and organized spatial structures owned by AGS promoted interactions between species, as the intrinsic justification for obtaining the benefits. We expect our findings to provide theoretical guidance for promotions and applications of the anammox process with excellent nitrogen removal capacity and stability., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Dry anaerobic digestion (AD) with high total solid content might upgrade conventional wet AD by enhancing digestion and reducing liquid digestate generation, which was not so popular due to lack of adequate knowledge and perceived operational complexity. In this study long term (447 days) pilot scale investigation was performed for various feedstocks including pig manure, corn straw and sludge. It was found dry method was more suitable for reactor start-up than wet method with relieved inhibition. Volatile fatty acid (VFA)/alkalinity (0.1 ~ 0.4) was effective as dry AD system stability indicator. Organic loading rate of 4.8 kg/(m 3 ·d) and temperature of 48 °C was optimized. Co-digestion achieved better volatile solid removal and system stability. Both hydrogenotrophic and acetoclastic methanogens stably existed in rector while hydrogenotrophic obtained higher abundance. This research contributed to understanding of reactor start-up, system stability indicator and optimized operational conditions (organic loading rate and temperature) during dry AD process., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This work investigated the effects of integration of floc, aggregate and carrier (IFAC) on anammox biofilm quality and development mechanisms. The IFAC system harvested high-quality anammox biofilm with a reduction of 60% in the formation period, an increment of 282.14%~397.26% in mechanical stability, an enhancement of 10.18 ~ 21.56% in ecological stability and an improvement of 9.44%~46.18% in abundance of the phylum Planctomycetes. Aggregates enabled carriers to accumulate initial biomass efficiently and equipped biofilm with additional joint forces. Floc promoted accumulation of terminal biomass, enhanced ecological stability by improving community diversity and raised abundance of the phylum Planctomycetes by assisting anammox consortium settlement. A model of the development procedure of high-quality anammox biofilm was established and a strategy for pre-designing the IFAC system to reap high-quality biofilm was proposed. We expect our findings to provide theoretical guidance for designs and applications of anammox process with excellent stability., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Enhancing anaerobic digestion performance is highly desired for its large-scale application. In the present work, magnetic fields (0-30 mT) and Ti-sphere core-shell structured additives (Ti-1 and Ti-2) are simultaneously introduced in anaerobic mono-digestion and co-digestions. Compared with the control group, the Ti-sphere core-shell structured additives increase the biogas yield by 27.12%-65.53% for mono-digestion and 8.47%-35.89% for co-digestion systems under the optimized magnetic field intensity (5 mT), respectively. Meanwhile, the degradation rate of total chemical oxygen demand is 54.68%-69.14% for anaerobic mono-digestion and 53.03%-78.25% for anaerobic co-digestion with Ti-sphere core-shell structured additives, respectively. The digestate with Ti-sphere core-shell structured additives exhibits the remarkable stability (45.24%-53.17%) and fertility (4.85%-4.97%). This work clarifies the effect of magnetic field in AD system, and proposes a possible mechanism for understanding the enhanced methanogenesis pathways induced by Ti-sphere core-shell structured additives., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Organic acid production including lactate and acetate is an economically attractive technology that has gained momentum worldwide over the past years. These series of action need to be performed by an esoteric and complex microbial community, in which different members have distinct roles in the establishment of a collective organization. In this study, we analyzed the bioma from bioreactors with various pH conditions of 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 (R 1 , R 2 and R 3 ), respectively, involved in acidogenic digestion for stable production of various organic acids by means of high-throughput Illumina sequencing, disclosing thousands of genes and extracting more than 53 microbial genomes. At pH 5.0, the hydrolysis reaction was enhanced and thus the lactic acid fermentation was stably improved to 45.96 mm/L and acetic acid to 73.77 mm/L. R 2 was found with the most suitable pH condition for stable organic acids production as Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria were the major members. Both the members have the key roles in heterofermentation and produce higher transcripts of key encoding enzymes involved in the dominant heterofermentation pathways.

A systemic strategy was proposed to improve aerobic granular sludge (AGS) stability and nitrogen (N) removal efficiency by optimizing feeding mode and substrate aiming at complicated wastewater characteristics. Key functional groups at the genus level identified by high-throughput sequencing were evaluated as well. The results showed that anaerobic feeding mode and acetate promoted the compact AGS formation with excellent total nitrogen (TN) removal efficiency (averaging 91.7% ± 4.1%) at various dissolved oxygen conditions. While the aerobic feeding mode led to a loose AGS structure with a vulnerable anaerobic core and poor TN removal efficiency (averaging 58.8% ± 7.4%). Simultaneous nitrification and denitrification process played the dominant role in N removal in compact AGS over the alternating nitrification and denitrification process. High-concentration glucose undermined feast-famine condition with filamentous bacteria growth out of granule and decreased TN removal efficiency to 67.3% ± 15.2%. Lower food to microorganism ratio may result in a lower N removal rate attributed to the sharply increased biomass concentration fed by glucose. Ammonia-oxidizing bacteria, nitrite-oxidizing bacteria, denitrifying bacteria, and denitrifying phosphorus accumulation organisms enriched during AGS granulation also contributed to the efficient N removal. The proposed strategy provided insights into the relationship between various factors and stable AGS formation, and systemic operation methods for various complicated wastewater treatment., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

In this study, the anaerobic treatment and microbial characteristics of high-concentration cephalosporin wastewater were studied. A pilot-scale expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactor was designed to treat cephalosporin wastewater, whose diameter, height and effective volume were 0.5 m, 4.9 m, 0.92 m 3 , respectively. With mixed high-concentration cephalosporin wastewater and municipal wastewater as a substrate, the anaerobic reactor was started and operated 414 days. An average COD removal efficiency of 72% was achieved at an organic loading rate (OLR) of 9.96 kg COD/(m 3 ·d), with a hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 25 h. The average methane content reached 82%. Methanobacterium and Methanomassiliicoccus were predominant archaea in the granular sludge for each of the organic loading rates, and the predominant methane-producing pathway was hydrogenotroph and methylotroph. Those results demonstrated that the EGSB reactor could treat high-concentration cephalosporin wastewater with a unique methane-producing pathway., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The application of an enhanced membrane coagulation reactor (E-MCR) for sewage concentration and energy recovery through anaerobic digestion (AD) was investigated. The results show that the addition of powder-activated carbon (PAC) and polyaluminum chloride (PACl) enhanced the sewage concentration efficiency and minimized the membrane fouling. The reactor was operated for 100 d with 70 d without severe fouling. The flux of 6 L/(m 2  h) with sludge retention time of 2 d recorded a long-term stable performance and recovered concentrates with about 6000-9800 mg/L of chemical oxygen demand (COD) values. The concentrate was used as feed for AD using a continuous stirred tank reactor. The results show that at a thermophilic temperature of 35°C, a high biogas yield was achieved at 20 and 30 d hydraulic retention time (HRT). Meanwhile, biogas yields of 10, 220, and 295 mL/(gCOD) were achieved at 10, 20, and 30 d HRT, respectively. The addition of PAC/PACl and the low flux condition enhanced the concentration efficiency and minimized the membrane fouling during the long-term operation. Thus, with the optimization of the operation, E-MCR becomes a promising option for sewage concentration and energy recovery.

High solid anaerobic digestion (HSAD) is a rapidly developed anaerobic digestion technique for treating municipal sludge, and has been widely used in Europe and Asia. Recently, the enhanced HSAD process with thermal treatment showed its advantages in both methane production and VS reduction. However, the understanding of the microbial community is still poor. This study investigated microbial communities in a pilot enhanced two-stage HSAD system that degraded waste activated sludge at 9% solid content. The system employed process "thermal pre-treatment (TPT) at 70 °C, thermophilic anaerobic digestion (TAD), and mesophilic anaerobic digestion (MAD)". Hydrogenotrophic methanogens Methanothermobacter spp. dominated the system with relative abundance up to about 100% in both TAD and MAD. Syntrophic acetate oxidation (SAO) bacteria were discovered in TAD, and they converted acetate into H₂ and CO₂ to support hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis. The microbial composition and conversion route of this system are derived from the high solid content and protein content in raw sludge, as well as the operational conditions. This study could facilitate the understanding of the enhanced HSAD process, and is of academic and industrial importance., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

A novel method of two-phase anaerobic digestion where the acid reactor is operated at low pH 4.0 was proposed and investigated. A completely stirred tank acid reactor and an up-flow anaerobic sludge bed methane reactor were operated to examine the possibility of efficient degradation of lactate and to identify their optimal operating conditions. Lactate with an average concentration of 14.8g/L was the dominant fermentative product and Lactobacillus was the predominant microorganism in the acid reactor. The effluent from the acid reactor was efficiently degraded in the methane reactor and the average methane yield was 261.4ml/gCOD removed. Organisms of Methanosaeta were the predominant methanogen in granular sludge of methane reactor, however, after acclimation hydrogenotrophic methanogens enriched, which benefited for the conversion of lactate to acetate. The two-phase AD system exhibited a low hydraulic retention time of 3.56days and high methane yield of 348.5ml/g VS removed., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Methanosaeta strains are frequently involved in the granule formation during methanogenic wastewater treatment. To investigate the impact of Methanosaeta on granulation and performance of upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors, three 1-L working volume reactors noted as R1, R2, and R3 were operated fed with a synthetic wastewater containing sodium acetate and glucose. R1 was inoculated with 1-L activated sludge, while R2 and R3 were inoculated with 200-mL concentrated pre-grown Methanosaeta harundinacea 6Ac culture and 800 mL of activated sludge. Additionally, R3 was daily dosed with 0.5 mL/L of acetyl ether extract of 6Ac spent culture containing its quorum sensing signal carboxyl acyl homoserine lactone (AHL). Compared to R1, R2 and R3 had a higher and more constant chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency and alkaline pH (8.2) during the granulation phase, particularly, R3 maintained approximately 90 % COD removal. Moreover, R3 formed the best granules, and microscopic images showed fluorescent Methanosaeta-like filaments dominating in the R3 granules, but rod cells dominating in the R2 granules. Analysis of 16S rRNA gene libraries showed increased diversity of methanogen species like Methanosarcina and Methanospirillum in R2 and R3, and increased bacteria diversity in R3 that included the syntrophic propionate degrader Syntrophobacter. Quantitative PCR determined that 6Ac made up more than 22 % of the total prokaryotes in R3, but only 3.6 % in R2. The carboxyl AHL was detected in R3. This work indicates that AHL-facilitated filaments of Methanosaeta contribute to the granulation and performance of UASB reactors, likely through immobilizing other functional microorganisms.

Hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis has been proved to be a feasible biological method for biogas upgrading. To improve its performance, the feasibility of typical anaerobic granules as the inoculum was investigated in both batch and continuous experiments. The results from batch experiments showed that glucose-acclimated granules seemed to perform better than granules acclimated to acidified products (AP, i.e. acetate, propionate and ethanol) in in situ biogas upgrading systems and a slightly higher H2 consumption rate (1.5 mmol H2 g VSS(-1) h(-1)) was obtained for glucose-acclimated granules. For AP-acclimated granules, the inhibition on anaerobic digestion and pH increase (up to 9.55±0.16) took place, and the upgrading performance was adversely affected. In contrast, better performance for AP-acclimated granules was observed in ex situ systems, possibly due to their higher hydrogenotrophic methanogenic activities (HMA). Moreover, when gas-liquid mass transfer limitations were alleviated, the upgrading performance was significantly improved (three-fold) for both glucose-acclimated and AP-acclimated granules. The HMA of anaerobic granules could be further enhanced to improve biogas upgrading performance via continuous cultivation with H2/CO2 as the sole substrate. During the three months' cultivation, secondary granulation and microbial population shift were observed, but anaerobic granules still remained intact and their HMA increased from 0.2 to 0.6 g COD g VSS(-1) d(-1). It indicated that the formation of hydrogenotrophic methanogenic granules, a new type of anaerobic granules specialized for high-rate hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis and biogas upgrading, might be possible. Conclusively, anaerobic granules showed great potential for biogas upgrading.

A combined process consisting of a short-cut nitrification (SN) reactor and an anaerobic ammonium oxidation upflow anaerobic sludge bed (ANAMMOX) reactor was developed to treat the diluted effluent from an upflow anaerobic sludge bed (UASB) reactor treating high ammonium municipal landfill leachate. The SN process was performed in an aerated upflow sludge bed (AUSB) reactor (working volume 3.05 L), treating about 50% of the diluted raw wastewater. The ammonium removal efficiency and the ratio of NO2- -N to NOx- -N in the effluent were both higher than 80%, at a maximum nitrogen loading rate of 1.47 kg/(m3 x ay). The ANAMMOX process was performed in an UASB reactor (working volume 8.5 L), using the mix of SN reactor effluent and diluted raw wastewater at a ratio of 1:1. The ammonium and nitrite removal efficiency reached over 93% and 95%, respectively, after 70-day continuous operation, at a maximum total nitrogen loading rate of 0.91 kg/(m3 x day), suggesting a successful operation of the combined process. The average nitrogen loading rate of the combined system was 0.56 kg/(m3 x day), with an average total inorganic nitrogen removal efficiency 87%. The nitrogen in the effluent was mostly nitrate. The results provided important evidence for the possibility of applying SN-ANAMMOX after UASB reactor to treat municipal landfill leachate.

This work focused on the lactic acid production from acidogenic fermentation of fruit and vegetable wastes treatment. A long term completely stirred tank reactor (CSTR) lasting for 50 days was operated at organic loading rate (OLR) of 11 gVS/(L d) and sludge retention time (SRT) of 3 days with pH controlled at 4.0 (1–24 day) and 5.0 (25–50 day). The results indicated that high amount of approximately 10–20 g/L lactic acid was produced at pH of 4.0 and the fermentation type converted from coexistence of homofermentation and heterofermentation into heterofermentation. At pH of 5.0, the hydrolysis reaction was improved and the total concentration of fermentation products increased up to 29.5 gCOD/L. The heterofermentation was maintained, however, bifidus pathway by Bifidobacterium played an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] An innovative half-submerged integrated two-phase anaerobic reactor is developed. [•] Acidogenic and methanogenic units were combined together but separated spatially. [•] Methanogenic community, pH, VFAs are different in acidogenic and methanogenic units. [•] Co-digestion of wheat straw and fruit/vegetable waste in the reactor is proved. [•] Digestion efficiency is affected by ratio of feedstocks and loading rate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]