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A short-term stimulation of ethanol enhances the effect of magnetite on anaerobic digestion

  • Environmental Biotechnology
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Abstract

Conductive iron oxides (CIO) have been proved recently to facilitate the anaerobic microbial syntrophy based on the direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) in batch experiments. However, the effect of CIO was always insignificant in anaerobic digestion (AD) reactor especially when the DIET-based syntrophic partners were absent. In this study, the effect of magnetite on performance of AD system with sucrose as a sole carbon source was investigated, but limited enhancement was achieved during the first 36-day operation. The short-term effect of ethanol addition was further studied in the magnetite-amended AD reactor, and results showed that the AD reactor with 10gFe/L micro-sized magnetite (R3) achieved higher performance of COD removal and methane proportion compared with the other reactors (R1 without magnetite; R2 with 2gFe/L micro-sized magnetite; R4 with 2gFe/L nano-sized magnetite). Meanwhile, the pyridoxine in extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and conductivity of anaerobic sludge from R3 increased more significantly than those of the others. Analysis of high-throughput sequencing indicated that the abundance of archaea increased in sludge from R3 and Methanosarcina responsible for DIET was dominant (63.64%). Additionally, the abundance of potential electroactive bacteria Chloroflexi in R3 was 7.57-fold, 3.61-fold and 7.37-fold as that of R1, R2 and R4, respectively. These results demonstrated that the electroactive microbes and methanogens could be enriched efficiently in anaerobic sludge via synergetic effect of magnetite addition and ethanol short-term stimulation.

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Funding

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51678519), Zhejiang Province Science and Technology Projects (2018C03003) and the Major Science and Technology Program for Water Pollution Control and Treatment (2018ZX07208009).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Environment Pollution Control and Treatment, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Caiqin Wang, Weilong Qiao, Hui Chen, Xiangyang Xu & Liang Zhu

  2. Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory for Water Pollution Control and Environmental Safety, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Xiangyang Xu & Liang Zhu

  3. Zhejiang Provincial Engineering Laboratory of Water Pollution Control, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Xiangyang Xu & Liang Zhu

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  1. Caiqin Wang
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  2. Weilong Qiao
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  3. Hui Chen
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  4. Xiangyang Xu
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  5. Liang Zhu
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Correspondence to Liang Zhu.

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Competing financial interests: C.W. declares no competing financial interests. W.Q. declares no competing financial interests. H.C. declares no competing financial interests. X.X. declares no competing financial interests. L.Z. declares no competing financial interests.

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Wang, C., Qiao, W., Chen, H. et al. A short-term stimulation of ethanol enhances the effect of magnetite on anaerobic digestion. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 103, 1511–1522 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-018-9531-2

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