An Experimental Study on the Biological Fixation and Effective Use of Carbon Using Biogas and Bacterial Community Dominated by Methanotrophs, Methanol-Oxidizing Bacteria, and Ammonia-Oxidizing Bacteria

I-Tae Kim,Kwang-Ho Ahn,Yoonah Jeong,Ye-Eun Lee,Jae-Roh Park,Jinhong Jung,Dong-Chul Shin

doi:10.3390/catal11111342

I-Tae Kim, Kwang-Ho Ahn + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/catal11111342

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Abstract

This study used biogas from a wastewater treatment plant and bacterial community where methanotrophs, Methylophilus, and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria clusters coexisted to propose an effective method for biological carbon fixation and nitrogen removal in wastewater treatment for carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). Biogas from wastewater treatment plant was provided, instead of purified CH4, to provide operation and maintenance conditions of bio-catalyst reaction for efficient biological carbon fixation by bacterial community using methane and CO2. This study assessed the conditions to induce type X methanotrophs that can use CO2 as a carbon source, as dominant species in the bacterial community and continuously and effectively supply reducing equivalents required for the conversion of CO2 to methanol within the system. Herein, the results of inducing efficient co-existence of methanotrophs, Methylophilus, and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria cluster in the bacterial community were shown.

Highlights

We investigated the bacterial community formation and the dominance of effectives species in reject water containing high concentrations of ammonia generated by anaerobic digesters in wastewater treatment plants, as well as the mutual roles and correlations between each bacterial cluster involved in the process [24]
This study propose the use of biogas generated from an urban wastewater treatment plant and a bacterial community comprising methanotrophs, Methylophilus, and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria, as an effective method of biological carbon fixation and nitrogen removal in wastewater treatment for CCUS
A significant level (11.2%) of type X methanotroph strains were identified only in methanotrophs cultured with CO2 and biogas

Summary

Introduction

Methanotrophs can be used for various purposes, such as purification of environments polluted by chlorinated hydrocarbons or harmful heavy metals [1,2,3], removal of methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide [4], biological nitrogen fixation and denitrification [5], production of bio-methanol, [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15], and production of bioplastics, such as poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) [16,17]. Certain studies have used biogas, instead of high-purity methane, as a realistic alternative, while others have sought to produce methanol from methane, among other gases that form crude biogas [15,16,17,18,19,20]. These studies targeted specific species to methanotrophs, limiting the application of the methods outside of laboratories

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