Optimization and microbial community analysis for anaerobic digestion of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) with waste sludge at different solid contents and temperatures

Abstract

In this study, optimum operating conditions for anaerobic digestion of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) with waste sludge was investigated at varying total solid (TS) content of the digestion solution (3.3%, 4.3%, 5.3%, 6.3%, 7.3% and 8.3%) and digestion temperature (35, 40, 45, 50 and 55 °C) to produce methane with high yield. The highest biogas yield reached experimentally was 163.2 mL/g TVS (with high CH4 content of 81.1 vol%) at 6.3% of TS content and digestion temperature of 35 °C. Kinetic parameters were estimated by using modified Gompertz, Cone and first-order kinetic models in which modified Gompertz model gave the lowest fitting errors (−1.0 to 3.7%). The effect of temperature on methane production rate was simulated by Ratkowsky model and optimum digestion temperature was found between 41.5 and 44 °C for maximum methane production at 6.3% TS. The experimental methane yields were 61.9–132.3 mL CH4/g TVS. The metagenomic sequencing was used to characterize microbial community structure of the anaerobic digestate at varying conditions and acetoclastic/hydrogenothrophic methanogenesis was equally dominated methane-producing pathways. The most abundant bacterial populations were found to be Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Chloroflexi and Actinobacteria. Based on alpha diversity indices, it can be concluded that effect of digestion temperature on microbial richness and diversity was higher than the effect of TS content.