Abstract
The anaerobic digestion process has been one of the key processes for renewable energy recovery from organic waste streams for over a century. The anaerobic digestion microbiome is, through the continuous development of novel techniques, evolving from a black box to a well-defined consortium, but we are not there yet. In this perspective, I provide my view on the current status and challenges of the anaerobic digestion microbiome, as well as the opportunities and solutions to exploit it. I consider identification and fingerprinting of the anaerobic digestion microbiome as complementary tools to monitor the anaerobic digestion microbiome. However, data availability, method-inherent biases and correct taxa identification hamper the accuracy and reproducibility of anaerobic digestion microbiome characterization. Standardisation of microbiome research in anaerobic digestion and other engineered systems will be essential in the coming decades, for which I proposed some targeted solutions. These will bring anaerobic digestion from a single-purpose energy-recovery technology to a versatile process for integrated resource recovery. It is my opinion that the exploitation of the microbiome will be a driver of innovation, and that it has a key role to play in the bio-based economy of the decades to come.
Highlights
The recovery and supply of renewable energy can be considered one of the key challenges of our present changing World with its increasing human population
One of the key technologies for renewable energy recovery from biomass is anaerobic digestion, which allows the production of energy-rich biogas
Fifteen years of high-throughput amplicon sequencing [49] have resulted in a vast amount of studies concerning the anaerobic digestion microbiome, either in lab-scale experiments or full-scale digesters
Summary
The recovery and supply of renewable energy can be considered one of the key challenges of our present changing World with its increasing human population. The European Commission recently (end 2019) engaged an ambitious commitment to achieve no net greenhouse gas emission by 2050. This so-called European Green Deal (COM/2019/640 final), obviously implies that other international partners share this ambition to avoid “carbon leakage” outside the European Union [1]. One of the key technologies for renewable energy recovery from biomass is anaerobic digestion, which allows the production of energy-rich biogas. Biogas constitutes about 8% of the renewable energy supply (estimation 2015), with values still increasing each year [5].
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