Description
The municipal wastewater, wastes from industry and agriculture contain large amounts of organic materials (including hydrocarbons) that are subjects of biological degradation processes. Disposal of these waste materials can be combined with the generation of alternative energy sources. Biogas industry uses organic waste-based alternative energy generation, the anaerobic degradation process is performed by specific consortia of microorganisms, the final biogas product consists of mainly methane and carbon dioxide. In the proposed project, our goal is to engineer, transform the original communities to microbial ecosystems producing the desired end-products (e.g. biohydrogen instead of biomethane and CO2, which are the major natural end-products of anaerobic degradation). The directed evolution is proposed to achieved by physical-chemical interventions. Continuous monitoring of the microbial communities will be done using metagenomics approaches. We can accurately assess the taxonomic composition and functional / metabolic potential and even the actually active metabolic processes in the aerobic and anaerobic degrading communities using metagenomic / metatranscriptomic methods. Our goal is to determine the necessary material-dependent interventions, actions, that could direct the decomposition process to result in the desired end products. We will develop a two-stage waste substrate to green energy conversion technology, the first dark fermentation step will be followed by a second photoheterotrophic stage generating and utilizing green algae biomass.
Summary of project results
Municipal wastewaters, wastes from industry/agriculture contain large amounts of organic materials which under proper conditions can be used in generation of alternative energy (biogas industry, biohydrogen etc). The projects goal was to engineer, to transform the original microbial communities of biodegradable wastes to produce the desired end-product (biohydrogen instead of biomethane and CO2). The directed evolution was achieved by physical-chemical interventions. The phylogenetic and functional diversity of the initial microbial communities were continuously followed by using metagenomic approaches. A two-stage waste substrate to green energy conversion technology was developed: the first dark fermentation step is followed by a second photoheterotrophic stage generating and utilizing green algae biomass. Obtained results of the project: 1. Description of production-technology regarding bio hydrogen production by using a two stage substrate to green energy conversion technology. 2. Green job creation at the project promoter
Summary of bilateral results
All necessary biological materials, chemical and molecular tools, bioinformatics expertise and techniques are available at respective laboratories at NIBIO, which made this collaboration effective and successful.