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Bacteria and archaea involved in anaerobic digestion of distillers grains with solubles

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Abstract

Cereal distillers grains, a by-product from bioethanol industry, proved to be a suitable feedstock for biogas production in laboratory scale anaerobic digesters. Five continuously stirred tank reactors were run under constant conditions and monitored for biogas production and composition along with other process parameters. Iron additives for sulfide precipitation significantly improved the process stability and efficiency, whereas aerobic pretreatment of the grains had no effect. The microbial communities in the reactors were investigated for their phylogenetic composition by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis and sequencing of 16S rRNA genes. The bacterial subcommunities were highly diverse, and their composition did not show any correlation with reactor performance. The dominant phylotypes were affiliated to the Bacteroidetes. The archaeal subcommunities were less diverse and correlated with the reactor performance. The well-performing reactors operated at lower organic loading rates and amended with iron chloride were dominated by aceticlastic methanogens of the genus Methanosaeta. The well-performing reactor operated at a high organic loading rate and supplemented with iron hydroxide was dominated by Methanosarcina ssp. The reactor without iron additives was characterized by propionate and acetate accumulation and high hydrogen sulfide content and was dominated by hydrogenotrophic methanogens of the genus Methanoculleus.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by a grant “Alğarış” from the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia) and a program “Development of Scientific Potential of High School” (project № 8159, Russia) to Ayrat Ziganshin. We gratefully acknowledge Ute Lohse for technical assistance and the helpful comments and suggestions of Jan Postel.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University, ul. Kremlevskaya 18, 420008, Kazan, The Republic of Tatarstan, Russian Federation

    Ayrat M. Ziganshin & Olga N. Il’inskaya

  2. Department of Biochemical Conversion, German Biomass Research Centre, Torgauer Str. 116, 04347, Leipzig, Germany

    Thomas Schmidt & Frank Scholwin

  3. Department of Environmental Microbiology, UFZ—Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Permoserstr. 15, 04318, Leipzig, Germany

    Hauke Harms & Sabine Kleinsteuber

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  1. Ayrat M. Ziganshin
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Correspondence to Sabine Kleinsteuber.

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Table S1

Sequencing results of representative bacterial 16S rDNA gene clones and experimentally determined terminal restriction fragments (T-RF) (DOC 308 kb)

Table S2

Sequencing results of representative archaeal 16S rDNA gene clones and experimentally determined terminal restriction fragments (T-RF) (DOC 200 kb)

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Ziganshin, A.M., Schmidt, T., Scholwin, F. et al. Bacteria and archaea involved in anaerobic digestion of distillers grains with solubles. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 89, 2039–2052 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-010-2981-9

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