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Microbial diversity in innovative mesophilic/thermophilic temperature-phased anaerobic digestion of sludge

  • Effective management of sewage sludge
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Abstract

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is one of the few sustainable technologies that both produce energy and treat waste streams. Driven by a complex and diverse community of microbes, AD may be affected by different factors, many of which also influence the composition and activity of the microbial community. In this study, the biodiversity of microbial populations in innovative mesophilic/thermophilic temperature-phased AD of sludge was evaluated by means of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). The increase of digestion temperature drastically affected the microbial composition and selected specialized biomass. Hydrogenotrophic Methanobacteriales and the protein fermentative bacterium Coprothermobacter spp. were identified in the thermophilic anaerobic biomass. Shannon–Weaver diversity (H′) and evenness (E) indices were calculated using FISH data. Species richness was lower under thermophilic conditions compared with the values estimated in mesophilic samples, and it was flanked by similar trend of the evenness indicating that thermophilic communities may be therefore more susceptible to sudden changes and less prompt to adapting to operative variations.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by ROUTES project. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development, and demonstration under grant agreement no. 265156. The authors are grateful to Dr. Kohei Nakamura for providing pseudomurein endopeptidase and for the precious suggestions about FISH analysis. The authors thank Raffaele Cesarini and Renato Di Lorenzi for reactors operation and VFA analysis.

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  1. Water Research Institute, IRSA-CNR, Via Salaria km 29,300, Monterotondo, RM, 00015, Italy

    M. C. Gagliano, C. M. Braguglia, A. Gallipoli, A. Gianico & S. Rossetti

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  1. M. C. Gagliano
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  2. C. M. Braguglia
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  3. A. Gallipoli
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  4. A. Gianico
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  5. S. Rossetti
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Correspondence to S. Rossetti.

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Responsible editor: Robert Duran

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Gagliano, M.C., Braguglia, C.M., Gallipoli, A. et al. Microbial diversity in innovative mesophilic/thermophilic temperature-phased anaerobic digestion of sludge. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 7339–7348 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3061-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3061-y

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