Co-metabolic Effect of Glucose on Methane Production and Phenanthrene Removal in an Enriched Phenanthrene-Degrading Consortium Under Methanogenesis.

Ziyan Zhou,Yanqin Wang,Mingxia Wang,Zhifeng Zhou

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2021.749967

Abstract

Anaerobic digestion is used to treat diverse waste classes, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a class of refractory compounds that common in wastes treated using anaerobic digestion. In this study, a microbial consortium with the ability to degrade phenanthrene under methanogenesis was enriched from paddy soil to investigate the cometabolic effect of glucose on methane (CH4) production and phenanthrene (a representative PAH) degradation under methanogenic conditions. The addition of glucose enhanced the CH4 production rate (from 0.37 to 2.25mg⋅L−1⋅d−1) but had no influence on the degradation rate of phenanthrene. Moreover, glucose addition significantly decreased the microbial α-diversity (from 2.59 to 1.30) of the enriched consortium but showed no significant effect on the microbial community (R2=0.39, p=0.10), archaeal community (R2=0.48, p=0.10), or functional profile (R2=0.48, p=0.10). The relative abundance of genes involved in the degradation of aromatic compounds showed a decreasing tendency with the addition of glucose, whereas that of genes related to CH4 synthesis was not affected. Additionally, the abundance of genes related to the acetate pathway was the highest among the four types of CH4 synthesis pathways detected in the enriched consortium, which averagely accounted for 48.24% of the total CH4 synthesis pathway, indicating that the acetate pathway is dominant in this phenanthrene-degrading system during methanogenesis. Our results reveal that achieving an ideal effect is diffcult via co-metabolism in a single-stage digestion system of PAH under methanogenesis; thus, other anaerobic systems with higher PAH removal efficiency should be combined with methanogenic digestion, assembling a multistage pattern to enhance the PAH removal rate and CH4 production in anaerobic digestion.

Highlights

Anaerobic digestion is a promising strategy for the disposal of diverse categories of waste materials, such as domestic wastewater, agricultural waste, food industry waste, and municipal solid waste, because it has the advantages of low energy consumption, less investment in land and management, nutrient reclamation, and biogas generation (Gallert and Winter, 1997; Co-metabolism of Glucose and PhenanthreneHe et al, 2005; Stabnikova et al, 2008; Chan et al, 2009; Holm-Nielsen et al, 2009; Lytras et al, 2021)
We examined the co-metabolic effect of glucose on CH4 production and phenanthrene degradation in a phenanthrene-degrading consortium under methanogenesis
We found that glucose addition significantly enhanced the CH4 production rate of the enriched consortium but had no influence on its ability to degrade phenanthrene

Summary

Introduction

Anaerobic digestion is a promising strategy for the disposal of diverse categories of waste materials, such as domestic wastewater, agricultural waste, food industry waste, and municipal solid waste, because it has the advantages of low energy consumption, less investment in land and management, nutrient reclamation, and biogas generation He et al, 2005; Stabnikova et al, 2008; Chan et al, 2009; Holm-Nielsen et al, 2009; Lytras et al, 2021). It seems that glucose can be used as a prioritized metabolic substrate to efficiently remove refractory pollutants in anaerobic digestion systems (Li et al, 2016b; Khan et al, 2017)

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