Comparative study of stability and half-life of enzymes and enzyme aggregates implemented in anaerobic biogas processes

Anaerobic digestion of mainly energy crops gains more and more importance in developing a sustainable energy supply. Therefore, the optimization of gas yield plays a major role in specific research attempts and economical considerations. One possibility to increase natural polymer degradation and concomitantly energy efficiency is the addition of exoenzymes to biogas facilities to enforce the primary degradation steps for biogas production. Therefore, in the present study, the stability and activity of five externally added enzyme mixtures to anaerobic biogas processes were investigated. Protein assays using soluble fractions of different biogas plants incubated together with the enzyme mixtures revealed that, within about 10 min, the externally added enzymes were mostly degraded. This very low stability in biogas reactors makes it unlikely that the addition of enzymes contributes significantly to degradation of macromolecules in the biogas process. Even the addition of protease inhibitors did not protect the added enzyme mixtures from degradation in most experiments. Furthermore, the influence of added enzymes on the viscosity of the biomass was tested. Only a marginal effect was obtained, when applying a tenfold higher concentration of added enzymes as proposed for practical use. The same result was achieved when commercially available enzymes were added to technical-scale fermentations using corn silage as monosubstrate. Therefore, these studies did not provide evidence that the addition of external enzymes into anaerobic degradation systems increases the methane yield in biogas facilities.