Biogas Science and Technology

Many biotechnological processes such as biogas production or defined biotransformations are carried out by microorganisms or tightly cooperating microbial communities. Process breakdown is the maximum credible accident for the operator. Any time savings that can be provided by suitable early-warning systems and allow for specific countermeasures are of great value. Process disturbance, frequently due to nutritional shortcomings, malfunction or operational deficits, is evidenced conventionally by process chemistry parameters. However, knowledge on systems microbiology and its function has essentially increased in the last two decades, and molecular biology tools, most of which are directed against nucleic acids, have been developed to analyze and diagnose the process. Some of these systems have been shown to indicate changes of the process status considerably earlier than the conventionally applied process chemistry parameters. This is reasonable because the triggering catalyst is determined, activity changes of the microbes that perform the reaction. These molecular biology tools have thus the potential to add to and improve the established process diagnosis system. This chapter is dealing with the actual state of the art of biogas process analysis in practice, and introduces molecular biology tools that have been shown to be of particular value in complementing the current systems of process monitoring and diagnosis, with emphasis on nucleic acid targeted molecular biology systems.

Plant biomass is the largest reservoir of environmentally friendly renewable energy on earth. However, the complex and recalcitrant structure of these lignocellulose-rich substrates is a severe limitation for biogas production. Microbial pro-ventricular anaerobic digestion of ruminants can serve as a model for improvement of converting lignocellulosic biomass into energy. Anaerobic fungi are key players in the digestive system of various animals, they produce a plethora of plant carbohydrate hydrolysing enzymes. Combined with the invasive growth of their rhizoid system their contribution to cell wall polysaccharide decomposition may greatly exceed that of bacteria. The cellulolytic arsenal of anaerobic fungi consists of both secreted enzymes, as well as extracellular multi-enzyme complexes called cellulosomes. These complexes are extremely active, can degrade both amorphous and crystalline cellulose and are probably the main reason of cellulolytic efficiency of anaerobic fungi. The synergistic use of mechanical and enzymatic degradation makes anaerobic fungi promising candidates to improve biogas production from recalcitrant biomass. This chapter presents an overview about their biology and their potential for implementation in the biogas process.

The increasing number of agricultural biogas plants and higher amounts of digestate spread on agricultural land arouse a considerable interest in the hygiene situation of digested products. This chapter reviews the current knowledge on sanitation during anaerobic digestion and the hygienic status of digestate concerning a multitude of pathogens potentially compromising the health of humans, animals and plants. Physical, chemical and biological parameters influencing the efficiency of sanitation in anaerobic digestion are considered. The degree of germ reduction depends particularly on the resistance of the pathogen of concern, the processing conditions, the feedstock composition and the diligence of the operation management. Most scientific studies facing sanitation in biogas plants have provided data ascertaining reduction of pathogens by the biogas process. Some pathogens, however, are able to persist virtually unaffected due to the ability to build resistant permanent forms. As compared to the feedstock, the sanitary status of the digestate is thus improved or in the worst case, the sanitary quality remains almost unchanged. According to this, the spreading of digestate on agricultural area in accordance to current rules and best practice recommendations is considered to impose no additional risk for the health of humans, animals and plants.

Direct interspecies electrons transfer (DIET) is a syntrophic metabolism in which free electrons flow from one cell to another without being shuttled by reduced molecules such as molecular hydrogen or formate. As more and more microorganisms show a capacity for electron exchange, either to export or import them, it becomes obvious that DIET is a syntrophic metabolism that is much more present in nature than previously thought. This article reviews literature related to DIET, specifically in reference to anaerobic digestion. Anaerobic granular sludge, a biofilm, is a specialized microenvironment where syntrophic bacterial and archaeal organisms grow together in close proximity. Exoelectrogenic bacteria degrading organic substrates or intermediates need an electron sink and electrotrophic methanogens represent perfect partners to assimilate those electrons and produce methane. The granule extracellular polymeric substances by making the biofilm matrix more conductive, play a role as electrons carrier in DIET.

Microbiological biogas upgrading could become a promising technology for production of methane (CH₄). This is, storage of irregular generated electricity results in a need to store electricity generated at peak times for use at non-peak times, which could be achieved in an intermediate step by electrolysis of water to molecular hydrogen (H₂). Microbiological biogas upgrading can be performed by contacting carbon dioxide (CO₂), H₂ and hydrogenotrophic methanogenic Archaea either in situ in an anaerobic digester, or ex situ in a separate bioreactor. In situ microbiological biogas upgrading is indicated to require thorough bioprocess development, because only low volumetric CH₄ production rates and low CH₄ fermentation offgas content have been achieved. Higher volumetric production rates are shown for the ex situ microbiological biogas upgrading compared to in situ microbiological biogas upgrading. However, the ex situ microbiological biogas upgrading currently suffers from H₂ gas liquid mass transfer limitation, which results in low volumetric CH₄ productivity compared to pure H₂/CO₂ conversion to CH₄. If waste gas utilization from biological and industrial sources can be shown without reduction in volumetric CH₄ productivity, as well as if the aim of a single stage conversion to a CH₄ fermentation offgas content exceeding 95 vol% can be demonstrated, ex situ microbiological biogas upgrading with pure or enrichment cultures of methanogens could become a promising future technology for almost CO₂-neutral biomethane production.

The first dynamic model developed to describe anaerobic digestion processes dates back to 1969. Since then, considerable improvements in identifying the underlying biochemical processes and associated microorganisms have been achieved. These have led to an increasing complexity of both model structure and the standard set of stoichiometric and kinetic parameters. Literature has always paid attention to kinetic parameter estimation, as this determines model accuracy with respect to predicting the dynamic behavior of biogas systems. As sufficient computing power is easily available nowadays, sophisticated linear and nonlinear parameter estimation techniques are applied to evaluate parameter uncertainty. However, the uncertainty of influent fractionation in these parameter optimization procedures is generally neglected. As anaerobic digestion systems are currently increasingly used to convert a broad variety of organic biomass to methane, the lack of generally accepted guidelines for input characterization adapted to the simulation model’s characteristics is a considerable limitation of model application to these substrates. Directly after the introduction of the standardized Anaerobic Digestion Model No. 1 (ADM1), several publications pointed out that the model’s requirement of a detailed influent characterization can hardly be fulfilled. The main shortcoming of the model application was addressed in the reliable and practical identification of the model’s input state variables for particulate and soluble carbohydrates, proteins and lipids, as well as for the inerts. Several authors derived biomass characterization procedures, most of them dedicated to a particular substrate, and some of them being of general nature, but none of these approaches have resulted in a practical standard protocol so far. This review provides an overview of existing approaches that improve substrate influent characterization to be used for state of the art anaerobic digestion models.

A challenging, and largely uncharted, area of research in the field of anaerobic digestion science and technology is in understanding the roles of trace metals in enabling biogas production. This is a major knowledge gap and a multifaceted problem involving metal chemistry; physical interactions of metal and solids; microbiology; and technology optimization. Moreover, the fate of trace metals, and the chemical speciation and transport of trace metals in environments—often agricultural lands receiving discharge waters from anaerobic digestion processes—simultaneously represents challenges for environmental protection and opportunities to close process loops in anaerobic digestion.