High-rate ethanol production at low pH using the anaerobic granular sludge process

In this study, we investigated the operational performance and product spectrum of glucose-fermenting anaerobic granular sludge reactor at pH 4. A selective environment for the growth of granules was implemented by the introduction of a 2 min settling phase, a hydraulic retention time of 6 h and a solid retention time of 12 ± 3 days. The...

Enrichment and Aggregation of Purple Non-sulfur Bacteria in a Mixed-Culture Sequencing-Batch Photobioreactor for Biological Nutrient Removal From Wastewater

Mixed-culture biotechnologies are widely used to capture nutrients from wastewater. Purple non-sulfur bacteria (PNSB), a guild of anoxygenic photomixotrophic organisms, rise interest for their ability to directly assimilate nutrients in the biomass. One challenge targets the aggregation and accumulation of PNSB biomass to separate it from the...

Resource recovery from organic waste streams by microbial enrichment cultures

Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) is a natural product that can potentially replace a part of the chemicals and plastics derived from fossil sources. One of the main barriers for market entry of PHA is its relatively high price compared to conventional (fossil) feedstocks. This high price is related to current industrial production methods which are...

Lipid recovery from a vegetable oil emulsion using microbial enrichment cultures

Background Many waste streams have a relatively high vegetable oil content, which is a potential resource that should be recovered. Microbial storage compound production for the recovery of lipids from lipid-water emulsions with open (unsterilized) microbial cultures was investigated in a sequencing batch reactor using a diluted vegetable oil...